The first time I saw you was at the local supermarket. You had bleach and tissue dangling from your arms and I wondered why you weren’t using carrier bags. Of everybody in the supermarket, why were you standing out? Defying the very order of things as we knew it!

  I tailed you from behind as a mouse would someone who was leaving breadcrumbs in their wake. I followed you down the aisle, watched you eye various goods without touching them. Then you picked up a jug of juice and cradled it between your arm and side. And there you were, burdened by the haphazard things you carried without a care in the world and I found myself wondering whether you’ll pick up something else, something unexpected like a charger or a loan mower and just drag it with you around.

  You didn’t add to the things you carried though, you checked out, paying with crumpled notes of cash. But before you departed you turned slowly, looking back and met my eyes directly. And the intensity of those orbs to your soul sent a shudder up and down my arms and I had to lean on the supermarket attendant who just happened to be standing beside me and who presumed to think that I was having a stroke. And then, you just left. The motion of your exit was final, you walked out with the grace of one who’d made up their mind that they were never coming back again and in your wake I saw flames.

  For months my visits to the supermarket were frequent since I last saw you, hoping to see you again. And the odd thing was the need to see you didn’t transcend into actually talking to you, no, it was a desire confounded on the emotion I felt when I laid eyes on you, this feeling of immense need to take every part of you in, even blinking becomes a risk, every moment of you was to be engraved to mind for a purpose I could not yet define.

  I saw you again on the day I almost got run over by a truck. Funny how these two things coincide. I was about to cross the road, waited patiently for the traffic to clear when I saw you crossing in the opposite direction. You wore a big brown coat that dipped below the knee, a white vest and red pants. You crossed the road with sure strides and dark shades prevented me from seeing your eyes, but your narrow face and button nose gave you away. You had a cigarette between your lips and you took a drag and blew a plume right before me. My legs were moving of their own volition, I didn’t know whether I was going forward or backward but I knew my head was following your movement and that’s all that seemed to matter. Then a truck came to an abrupt stop inches away from me and the driver blew the horn and called my mother a whore for giving birth to an idiot like me.

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  After that I knew I would never see you again. I don’t know why, but the way you left the supermarket with an air of finality is the same sense I got from seeing you that day on the road. It was final, and after I crossed I looked back at you and I saw the motion with which you flicked the cigarette butt away and it looked like you didn’t smoke cigarettes for fun, you smoked them to die. I wondered what you’d look like in your casket, would your still body glimmer with the signs of ease and abandon that I’ve come to associate with you? Or with all corpses will you languish in eternal sleep?

  Then I bumped into you again, nearly a week later at the most unexpected place. The local library. That dingy old place that smells of old parchment and dust. My home away from home is what I call it. The books and the silence held a familiarity so profound to me that I felt very much at home within the library. I had three books set before me and as I perused I just happened to glance up, nothing forced the lift of my head, not even a need to strain a muscle, and then I saw you three rows away. With a small book in your hands. Wearing a baggy T-shirt and grey pants. Eyes fixed on the book in your grasp.

  I suddenly wanted to know what you were reading. It became paramount to me, so I ogled, stared, glared, squinted at, observed, took in and whatever abbreviation needed to describe the simple act of one enforcing their entire attention on another. And just as I was about to make out the scratches on the cover of your book. You stood up, book in hand, and approached me. I don’t know why I panicked at your approach. I was suddenly sweaty in an aired out place. You walked straight to me and stood beside me, looking down at me and it was akin to the sight of an empress glaring down at a peasant.

  “If you continue looking at me like that I’ll take out my knife,” You said and touched at your side where, surprisingly, a knife was sheathed to a holster on your belt, “And I’ll gorge out your eyes.” Your voice was husky, like you’ve had a cold for quite some time. I didn’t nod neither did I acknowledge what you’d said, all I could do was stare at you. How can I explain what I saw? What I felt? The revelations alone would confound the greatest poet alive! How do you describe a flower that’s on fire? A river made of lava? A mountain of Sulphur!

  You returned to your seat and I knew that as long as I sat there, I would always look at you so I did what cowards do and fled.

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