Illustration: Lila Huang
It was
the way her hair fell over her glasses frames from two seats across
and weaved right into his jumble of thoughts,
both guarding their own thoughts in fortresses,
walls of books to hide behind
only daring to watch from a distance,
he can still see her eyes light up to reveal whole universes within
and she’s still earshot of his smooth, rolling epiphanies
of things beyond even comprehension.
the rings under their eyes darker
than those sleepless nights spent wondering,
trying to turn scattered points into theories
trying to linearize fluctuating heartbeats
she, the puzzle he just cannot solve,
he, the question demanding an answer;
both looking for conclusions
–more caffeine,
it seemed, was the single solution
and on groggy mornings she thinks
she might be seeing things,
like the sporadic pattern of hands slightly touching
and smiles and direct eye contact.
but
perhaps they’re just a series of miraculous little outliers
or variables manipulated simply for a reaction:
merely points of tangency,
two points coming infinitely close then curving apart.
And he’d never believed in fate and destiny
and she was never very good with probabilities
but
really, what are the chances?
so she went ahead and took one.
