Vasilis.
"Come in!" Jade said, and a flood of simultaneous relief and doom washed over me.
She should not have done that.
I knew I should not have taken her invitation, yet I found myself walking into her home.
A pit of nerve-wracking excitement mixed with apprehension lit itself ablaze in my chest, as she led me through the long, sweeping foyer that was flooded with bright, golden orange chandeliers.
The lights from the chandeliers cast a warm, ethereal glow on her skin, and I couldn't help but stare in mindless admiration.
She turned to throw me a glance over her shoulder, and it appeared as if the whole world stopped in that moment.
My fingers itched to trace the fullness of her lips, to run along the smooth expanse of bronzed skin across her high cheekbones. To get tangled and lost in the beguiling wilderness of her hair.
Her hair...
She had let it down today, and it spilled in springy afro-curls over her shoulders, all the way to the middle of her back, black and luscious in its alluring volume.
I wished she would let her hair down like this everyday.
She smiled and I blinked like a deer caught in headlights. I'd been caught staring.
I cleared my throat and quickly looked away from her, knowing there was no way she'd have known what I was thinking, but still mortified at the thought nonetheless.
"So, have you decided on the poets for your section of the project yet?" Jade asked as she led me into an expansive sitting room with incredibly high ceilings, and even more extravagant chandeliers.
I couldn't help but wince internally at the fact that the house was mostly glass. The doors, the windows...nearly everything. If I lost my ring here, I'd die a very slow and painful blistering death, and then I'd awaken again in excruciating pain.
Her expression was so casual and nonchalant, almost indifferent. It was such a huge contrast to how anxious I felt about being in the same space as her.
Being in her house...
I let my shoulders lift in a shrug I hoped was casual. I couldn't let the mess of my erratic emotions show.
"Yeah, I have a few in mind. I'm still deliberating on my choices though. There are so many amazing poets, it's hard to choose just two," I answered.
Her eyes lit up at this and she nodded vigorously in agreement.
"Right?! I was thinking I might eventually have to do more than two. I'll just have to condense the analysis thesis into a reasonable number of words and try not to exceed the word count by too far,"
She explained and I nodded too, the pit of excitement growing bigger in my chest as my mouth blurted a question I'd been wanting to ask but was waiting for a more appropriate time.
"Do you have a favorite poet?" I asked, wondering if she would take this as another casual question, or if she would realize that it was a desperate attempt at trying to get to know what lay beyond that mask of indifference she always walked about the earth with.
She turned to look at me. We had arrived at another sort of sitting room/lounge area now. It was smaller than the sitting room we'd just passed through, but it was still super spacious.
Jade motioned for me to take a seat, and I obliged and sank down unto the long, plush white sofa.
She settled down beside me with her legs folded up on the sofa, and a faraway look in her eyes. She was facing me and she seemed lost in thought at my question.
I swallowed, unable to do anything about the fact that her knees were resting against my thigh.
I wanted to move, put some distance between us before I did something stupid. But I remained rooted to the sofa, my breaths slowly turning shallow as I waited for her to finish riding the train of thought in her mind.
"I do," she finally said, letting her eyes meet mine. "But I don't have just one favorite poet. Several of them speak to me in different ways that are all equally as innately visceral, so it's hard to just choose one favorite out of all of them."
She placed her hands on her knees, and her fingers lightly brushed against my thigh.
"But a few poets I hold very dear to my heart are Shakespeare—I know that's a very generic choice, but he was a genius. You can't deny that," she shrugged, and I smiled, forcing myself to ignore the warmth stirring in my lower abdomen as her fingers continued brushing against my thigh.
"He truly was," I agreed, hoping my internal struggles weren't obvious in my voice.
"Yeah," she continued. "More on the list is Anne Bradstreet, Audre Lorde, Sylvia Plath, Maya Angelou, Anna Akhmatova, T.S Elliott and numerous others. For earlier ones, I really love Mahmoud Darwish. He's actually one of my options for the project,"
She finished and my heart skipped a beat so violently, I could almost swear she'd heard it.
Mahmoud Darwish was on my list of options too.
"What about you? Do you have any favorite poets?" Her bewitching hazel eyes bored into mine as she asked, and I had to fight the instinct to lean in closer to her when she looked at me like that.
I was almost convinced in that instant, that she knew this was not just a casual question I'd thrown at her. I could swear she knew I was trying to pick her apart, and I could swear she was doing the same to me.
"I actually had Mahmoud Darwish on my list too," I scratched my head as I answered, feeling heat rush to my cheeks.
I watched her eyes widen for a brief moment, shining with something I struggled to identify. Then, her face broke into a smile that turned my heart into pure molten lava.
"No way!" She shrieked, her excitement leaking out of her hazel eyes like honey as she giggled. "You like Mahmoud Darwish! What's your favorite poem of his?" She moved closer, a subconscious act that only further highlighted my doom.
But I was helplessly immobile. I couldn't have moved even if I wanted to. Not with the way her excitement was rolling off her like soft pelting rain drops, drenching me in the process.
I couldn't keep the smile off my face.
"I Come From There," I answered without thinking too much about it.
It was such an automatic response because it truly was my favorite poem of Mahmoud Darwish's, that I had not stopped to realize what it would mean when spoken out loud to someone else who understood the meaning behind the poem.
And it was only when I watched her smile slowly begin to fade, and a solemn look of devastating longing took over her face, that I realized what I had done.
It was silent for a while, and my dead heart hammered against my chest.
I wished so badly that I had said something different. Or that I hadn't mentioned Mahmoud Darwish at all. That I hadn't brought up the topic of favorite poets at all. That I hadn't even come here in the first place. That I was not a part of this stupid project.
But then her eyes returned to mine, bringing her back from their painful trip across a part of her mind I could not reach.
She gave me a smile. "That's my favorite poem of his too," She admitted softly.
Her words pulled on my heart, like rubber strings pulled taut, until they snapped. And pain resonated through my body at the sudden realization of what I'd just uncovered.
We were tortured souls, me and her. We were tortured souls who had never felt at home in the world.