On the brink of death, you receive the bill for the slice of cake you shared with someone more open than you.
Glancing up at the owner of the hands holding the check, you find a tall stranger who loves the same things you think you do.
The room lightens to a specific shade of gold, an emerging sunlight competing with the darkness of the late hour.
A manifestation of joy sits across the dark wood table,
The low lights of the restaurant hide the sun breaking through the clouds
A leap of faith, your meals are the same
You have impulse to run, overwhelmed by gentleness and whimsy
He tells you that you are one of many, one of a million, expendable, replaceable
You think you may have misheard. Your glass of water is refilled.
You’re recounted moments of another person’s home, endeared, life a story you read with unnumbered pages
Across the table there’s a smile too bright to look directly at. Your eyes don’t meet each other.
You swallow some noodles
You’re for a moment split open by the thought, before briefly turning, making eye contact with
An unknown woman, inexplicably bewildered, she stares,
The price of beauty it’s mere ephemerality
You don’t want to leave, the moment is already gone
The rain’s stopped, and you ache to hear more stories.
You haven’t run around a museum since you were a child,
The visual memories had faded into feelings, you see that the exhibits you once loved have been replaced.
You see yourself in one of the screens, you watch as a baby is flipped onto its head, helpless, you recall a forceful subjugation.
Oddly comforted by the presence of an oddly tall stranger, who talks to you about fireworks. A large presence in your small world. You imagine the lives of the lonely people in the theater.
As you’re consumed by moving images, you are struck by nothing more than the pure feeling of another person. You’re jarred by the absence of loneliness.
You are swarmed by children on the subway, and again in a small pizza place. Together, you watch a third stranger empty the entirety of the contents of a salt shaker onto his food before eating. This time, you’ve ordered nothing. You watch everyone else eat.
You wonder why everything feels profound, and then you feel new distances. His voice sinks when he lies.
Overwhelmed, you can no longer tell the difference between meaning and unmeaning.
You have no idea what love is. Joy’s gone before you can tell him.
One night you wake up and find pieces of Joy embedded into your soul. He joins the rest. You don’t sleep for a while. You care too much for someone you only know about from your made up stories.
You write about Philomela in your spare time. Watch the Sphinx spin around the wheel of fortune. Listen to thunder on the windowsill. Read more poetry, do laundry, and, occasionally, find yourself in complete dysfunction. A doctor’s live lecture reminds you that your slow death “will force you to find, and cling to joy, and that is a highly privileged rapture”. You believe him.
Joy practically fills the room at the party, touching everyone.
everytime you turn, you’re greeted with bright blue
In the dark, movements are lucid, fluid, people disperse and blend together. Animal intimacy in the corner, guests came dressed in their favorite costumes.
A handsome, albeit gay, stranger whispers platonic passions in your ear.
Joy itself finds itself abstracted from intoxication. Love goes to someone else that night.
The party a sea of unrealized dreams, you wade through a slew of the slighted before leaving.
For the first time, in two big, comfy chairs, Joy asks you for a story of yours. You are scared to remember it, and choose not to. He doesn’t press. Maybe the request was only polite. You notice that Joy gives for the sake of taking, and craves empty space to feel himself large and impressive in filling up.
By now he’s finished his tea, and doesn’t comment on how you haven’t yours.
Joy has little interest in the things you love, is more concerned with how he makes you feel than what makes you.
He tells you more stories and you marvel at the empty confessions.
The two of you can’t seem to figure out how to fit together, don’t know how to click. You know you’re not really supposed to be there
For a small moment, you can’t tell where you end and he begins. You’re in a room with a stranger you can’t connect with who feels like you. You can’t figure out why he feels like you
Disoriented by the absence of noise, unsure if you’re overstimulated, you hear awkwardly saccharine music. It’s a friend’s favorite, after all. It’s odd, repulsive even, until suddenly, it clicks, and you swear everything is better now. The lights of the city flash around you, the best and brightest young women shriek and giggle wandering back to their rooms below your window. You wait with bated breath to feel the scent of lavender reach for you again.
In absence, Joy intimates his permanent departure from your small world.
Finally, you ask Joy the important question, the real one, and he says no.
Joy says no to you.
Heartbroken, she breathes a sigh of relief.
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