When the Veil is Thinnest
Anonymous Encounters of Myself
When the veil is thinnest, I capture the edge of silence. I fear who I’ll meet when I wake up. A stranger, one-sidedly, could find me in the dark, acquainted with and hunting my name. In their eyes, we had already synthesized. I fear that human-shaped figure - that mosaic of everything I love and everything I’m scared of losing. The two of us, banging our bodies against a wall of blindness. When does symmetry become repetition?
Disembodied voices and bodies made nude by a mourning that consumes you in stages. I always wonder what would happen if our eyes dimmed at the same time. His eyes, that small feeling in a vast space. Mine, slipping fingers between ribs to breathe. Together, portents of decaying illusions. I don’t know what I want, but I find myself wanting a bounteous experience. I say I’m not in love with him, but I can’t close the door on us.
I keep going back to the thought that he knows my name and knows where to find me. To think that when I open my eyes, a presentation of total and indelible intimacy has taken inventory of me. I am intrigued by him. I picture him and me entangled in the bed - my fingers now in his ribs, his shoulder pressed against my jaw, causing me to hear his movements through the grinding of my teeth. Is this intimacy? I look at my arms and can no longer discern his from mine.
The next night, we somehow sleep closer even though our backs are turned to each other. Our arms hang off the same side of the bed, reaching under and around to grab each other's waists. Again, when does symmetry become repetition? Is this intimacy? I sit at the edge of the bed as he looks through me from across the room. He reminds me that seduction is depicting fully clothed bodies.
No phallic dream, no remnants of familiarity, no passing through could describe the tangled freedom he showed me. He whispered, “We’ll talk tomorrow”, as I awoke to my fingers outstretched and a cramp in my side.
I can’t wait to do it again.
© remy styrk 2025