Blue Plaid Shirt

by J. H., Fitchburg, MA

You sit in front of me in your blue plaid shirt. There may only be a foot and a half between us but in reality there is so much more than distance which separates us. I could reach forward and brush my fingers across your back, but I wouldn't really be touching you. You turn and glance at me. That look is both encouraging and frustrating to me. You turn again and I watch your back, the dearness of the back of your head, the freckle hidden behind your ear, the muscles in your jaw moving ever so slightly as you chew gum. I watch and I wait for something. I wait for you in your blue plaid shirt that I want to feel in my fingers, like I want to feel your breath on my cheek, and your arms around me.

I see your hands and want to touch them. I can envy your fingers almost as though they weren't a part of you, as they touch your cheek, brush across your lips, and run through your hair. I cannot help but love your hands with their long slender fingers.

How can I walk away from you and go on with my day when you are somewhere else? I have to and so I drink in the reality of you now, as you sit here before me. How can I bear to see you with anyone else? And how could I consider going anywhere with someone besides you, when I want you so badly? You cannot imagine the emptiness I feel, the longing, the tears that even now I can feel inside, though you won't see them. The memory of your eyes is with me always - I can see them in my mind, those deep brown pools that I would love to be lost in.

Don't turn now. Stay ever in that position, turned slightly to one side so that your eyelashes appear with the slightest motion of your head, and the corner of your eyebrow also becomes visible. I do not know how I bear to be cut off from you. Why must you always cut me off? You present me with your back and in my mind, I trace the outline of you, every curve of your body, as I see it in the blue plaid.

Even now I long to reach out and touch you, regardless of things going on around us or anything so mundane as daily life. I want to touch your mind and your heart as well. I long for your whole being. Not having any part of you, I am jealous of everyone you share yourself with. Why can you never share yourself with me? Why not give me an atom of yourself, when you could have my entire being? My entire being, which is now focused only on the nearness of you, and I wait for something. I wait for you, in your blue plaid shirt, to give something back. I love you.