Concrete Amber

By Gollummullog

---

I don't know why

but I view you through a sheet of amber, molten

frozen, stuck in bubbles of gel, golden

your image distorted, giving off vibes of confusion.

I view you like through blown glass from a different world

where you're no longer trapped there

---

Do you see me? Do you even notice as I sit three seats away from you? I think. I see you moving slightly, your hair softly shining and rippling like waves of tigereye.

And still I write.

---

My voice cracks when I think of how you're separate

and my breath catches

as I hear snatches

of your conversation, carried on the wind,

a window into the box

in which you're sealed.

---

I'm the one who sits behind the bathroom door and hears people talk about the fashions I'm wearing, how they're going to emulate my, like, totally awesome dress sense. I'm the one who cries once they're gone.

You're the one who skates alone at the park. You're the one who talks to the ones I'm scorned by - no one.

I wonder if you even saw me as I asked you to the dance? I know you were thinking about something else, maybe asking yourself if it was a dare? I think deeper and look back at myself, pitifully standing in your wake like a pathetic animal waiting for its master to return.

---

Time stops as I think of you

My heart stops as I stop walking

my friends keep talking

and you brush past me,

a plexiglas coating sealing the wall between us.

You don't even feel me.

I curl up against the bus wall. A huge bump, and some people lift right off their seats, whooping in delight. I merely scrape my face on the screws jutting from the plasticine walls as I watch you from behind.

---

I stick a needle into the wall

and withdraw your essence into its holder

and I drink of you, shivering a little colder

and want more.

And yet you walk by, unaware of my desire

to reach out and touch your life

---

I want nothing more to do with shallowness, I decide. I'd give it up just to be with you. My friends- they're not really friends. My acquaintances- they only know the person that I display, like a shining wax mask, lips curled in a cherry-lip-gloss smile. And behind it, I'm still thinking of you.

---

I'm the one who laughs with everyone. I'm the one with connections.

You're the one who sits alone. You're the only one I really want to talk to.

Admiration from afar

And when we talk, you're remote, far away

And I think, perhaps another day,

you'll touch my life, too, through this wall of amber.

And the alien sensation I get as I hear your silence

will be mine.

---

I don't know how, and I really don't know why, but although I'm the one who's surrounded by people, and you're the one with only a skateboard, I'm the one who's really, truly, completely, utterly alone.

Maybe tomorrow I'll see you.

Maybe tomorrow I'll know you.

Maybe tomorrow, you'll notice me.

Maybe tomorrow, you'll love me.

---

I see you through that wall of amber.

You don't stop, you just keep going

in that world, you continue flowing

with the people around you not even there.

This is tomorrow. I finally stop and plunge

into the deluge of sticky change.

You finally halt.

And see me.

And feel me there.

And breathe me.

I finally know you

and smell you

and as I brush against you

my obsession is fulfilled

and for us, trapped behind that wall

of amber

we don't remember

anything before I crossed over.

---

I turn the page, and look at you again, and look down at my poem again, and see your hair rippling, your strong face careless, your silent lips unmoving, your eyes closed. I long to touch that hair, stroke that face, kiss your lips and open your eyes to see mine, long for you to see me there.

I look at my poem.

If only it were real.

---

Hope you liked it.

Gollum