he wears primary colours around his shoulders and carries music inside the depths of his dark eyes. he's not different than the other boys i've liked, it's just that it is not only his looks that attract me so. he adds a major third beneath the tritone that sours my days, and gives tiny little moments a colour that my eyes cannot define. he keeps his wings folded out of sight but i know he has them. sometimes they come into view when he's onstage with his violin. our mouths have not touched, merely smiled in each other's direction; our eyes have only met in coincidence. we are strangers but at the same time we are too familiar to the other, our feet have walked the same corridors and our paths crossed more than once.
we've listened to each other play many times. always in the backdrop of my memories, sitting in the opposite side of the same hall. and i know my name has popped up during dinner conversations at his home, as his name has been pronounced several times within our walls. his parents greet me as though we have been close for years. he smiles and says hello whenever we meet in school hallways. his eyes contain warmth that is reflected in his performances. i remember wishing we could do a duet together one time. get to know each other as well as we could have done.
they say he is going to usa and become a doctor. surrender his instrument in exchange for medicinal tools. next saturday we are going to the same concert. funny, isn't it. always walking parallell roads. we see each other but have never held a conversation before. i see him casually turn around in his seat to scan the choir sitting behind him, just as i drag my eyes away. it's like he is underneath a stage light even when he is not. he pulls at my gaze like the air between us is a magnetic field - he holds music in the palm of his hands, that can fill emptiness with notes like passing yellow fields and the voice of hearts.
both sides, i think, wants to bridge the distance - there is a space of nothingness that is like a barrier separating paths. his family - they are all smiles and approaching eyes and facebook requests. i could have ended up going to the same school as his brother. i could have found myself in a position in life so different from what i am in now. i saw him first in a pamphlet. then beneath a chandelier. then in concert halls and outside classrooms and hallways when he holds the door open for me to pass through. eyes smiling in darkness. he is liquid gold and the colour of young winter nights and dusky red. he is a colour my eyes never saw before, and will never completely fathom so to be able to describe it.
27.1.18
