Anew

I went out with a beautiful girl last night. We met at a bar a few blocks away from my job. She was tall and delicately dressed, in a way which highlighted the thinness of her legs. Her tight black tank top brought attention to the smooth, youthful vibrance of her skin. Her eyes were calm and bright. She was younger than me, not yet claimed by the accumulations of failure time tends to inflict.

As I spoke I saw in her eyes that she was charmed by my words, at times almost breathless. She asked me if my role at work involved a lot of public speaking. No, I told her, it's the cocaine, and I thanked her for the compliment. I am generally quite reserved. I couldn't help but talk at length about a variety of topics, and I caught myself riding waves of self-generated excitement. Luckily, for me, my passion was contagious, practically infectious. Beautifully poetic sentences wet with meaning fell from my lips and washed over her, enveloping her in a prismatic mist. There are moments in speech when one can see in the face of another the mark of impact, lines of dominoes falling in elaborate patterns behind the listener's eyes. My words spilled over her and she steeped herself in them. Some insightful observations were made on her part. She said things to me that showed she'd given me all of her attention. It felt nice to feel felt.

When she got cold I put my arms around her, over her light frame, her long black coat. We walked toward her place and, with night having fallen and the temperature having dropped, she looked up at me through the glow of her cigarette. "You're not like anyone I've met before," she said, "you're interesting." I told her I was offended, that I only ever wanted to be normal. She said she wanted us to go to the bus stop where we'd first met, because there was poetry in that.

I thought so, too.