2005 Yu55

He brushed past her, no contact, each one at arm’s length, yet she could feel the air stream, feel it from his overcoat as it billowed; not enough time under the blue-white streetlights to catch a look at his face—no, it was only his power, grace, that made her turn 90 degrees and desire him with her tears. What would this crush have meant to her? she asked herself, in the vast, eventless evening, strolling round that wellworn path while the neighborhood lunatic stalked her from the shadows, smiling his admiration, she fantasized an embrace to crack mountains, drain oceans, and pierce her very breast with the kind of pain that, to the lonesome and untouched, is relief from the hollow centuries of calling out, calling out, for the equidistant others to draw closer, for they never do, never, and such a long never that has been. As he dashed on, dissolving into darkness, her heart burned, would not cool. She knew not about the man in the overcoat, that he was no more than a missile Colder than Neptune, an assassin of order, and had he turned a degree and granted her that embrace, she would have been raped by a transient Death, for whom the amoral act would become self-destruction, and no one would know, or care. Only the madman would be witness.