AT THE LIBRARY

monica lee

The room is quiet, only the occasional rustle of a page; The day is soft and supple and mutes the troubled air. The people pose, collapsed, in front of musty books. Their misty eyes wander aimlessly,

They scribble feverishly in fits, They are very limp and very bored.

You sit at one end of the room, and I am many feet away; And the air vibrates with the subtle undertones

Of all that we are to each other, and all that we have been to each other.

Many people are all around us, but they do not hear. You bend over your desk, with the intensity of your every motion,

Your eyes intent on some paper or other, And completely oblivious of me (or are you?). The sun plays over your silky new-washed hair And ripples it into flashes of mica and wine; Flashes that spark the ruby flame

And send the ice-blue fire

Streaming through my tortured veins.

The room darkens about you, I cannot think.

The air grows dense and sings thru my quickened nerves. My body melts and flows mercurially, and iron bonds

pull me to you.

I must touch your hair, I must feel your body warm

beneath my hand.

Surely I must touch your hair or break.

Then suddenly you look up

You are startled, but your eyes are throbbing with liquid emotion.

I dissolve in the depths of your eyes, I cannot pull myself loose.

How can I hold the substance of myself when your eyes devour me?

You reach towards me, and you are mine as much as you will ever be...

The bond snaps; we look at each other, and your eyes are full of love.

And then of fear -and already you have withdrawn My sterile hopes fall crashing around me.

My body weeps in shivering frustration,

Descends the endless spiral

Only to mount again, in a minute or an hour or a day.

The room is still quiet.

I look at the people, but they do not notice;

They are very bored and very tired.

And you --you are lost in your Sea of Repression; And so another day drags on.

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