Make Them Tell You What They Want

As I glance up at the darkening evening sky, I catch a glimpse of a v-shaped formation of geese flying off into the grayish almond sunset, sunk low beneath black trees. An almost imperceptible current in the air is sifting itself through the melancholy and autumn spices, the scent of dead leaves pressed down upon the hardened earth. Sitting on the window ledge watching my breath fog up the glass, I’m staring up at some electric wires slung out against infinite space. Drifting past the pierced netting of twinkling starlight, I imagine you at a small table in a cafe somewhere in a foreign city. A few melting candles flickering upon the old polished wood, you are gently lit by the glow as you sip your wine and sink into the book you are reading while ignoring everyone and everything around you. You have read the words a hundred times before, the pages are worn at their soft edges, some of them torn. But that mind of yours, ever insatiable, ever advancing over the hills, thought by intricate thought. All knowledge is an ascending and a descending. There is a cadence in each of your bones. There are secrets people keep because they are unsure of who they are, and because they are susceptible in ways they cannot stomach for reasons they may or may not understand. Who do you burn for, there in your simmering eyes? Think of each body who has felt the curve of your mouth, licked the shape of the heat in the blood in your fingertips. Separate them into the ones who deserved your worship, and the ones who didn’t. Was each just as sweet, just as willing? Does it matter now or has every feeling faded into the nothingness that is a past riddled with shadow and smoke. What was it you told them you wanted from them most? Was it the truth, or was it a game, and is there a difference? Remembering in vivid detail the one you sunk your teeth into deep, ignoring her whimpers and pleas for relief, you look up casually from the text you hug close to your chest and take another warming swallow. Someone has thrown more logs on the fire as a group of patrons come shuffling in from the cold. Umbrellas and overcoats, wet rain on young faces of no one you know. I once met a girl who believed in love. She smiled at strangers and let them take her home. Drank every night like she was already gone. Rug burns on her knees, eyes glued helpless to the diamond-like stars.