Reflection in the Window

"How far do you want to go with this?"

"Not yet, don't say anything yet."

"I don't think it works for somebody else...I mean, Gary and Celeste...what do they know about anything?..."

"...It's not a game, it's not something you play...it's just something that happens...It's like seeing someone for the first time, like...you could be passing on the street, and you look at each other and for a few seconds there's a kind of a recognition, like you both know something, and the next moment the person is gone and it's too late to do anything about it...and you always remember it because it was there, and you let it go, and you think to yourself, what if I had stopped, what if I had said something? What if? What if...it may only happen a few times in your life..."

"...or once." Or once.

That Mona Lisa smile from across the elevator bank. Watching you walk down to the courtyard and wondering about the spaces between us.

How do I get closer to you? How do I make you smile? Make you laugh? Make you see me?

And why would I think those things? Why would I trust you? Why would you trust me?

"And if I had answered, what were you going to say? ...so then I would have said yes, but for all you know I could have had a SWAT team waiting for you...?"

"It would have been worth the risk..."

And one day a line gets crossed, one too many lines gets crossed, and you don't notice any more. And you can't tell, looking in the mirror anymore, whether or not you're actually a worthwhile person.

But then there's that person you meet, who puts everything back in perspective. Makes you want to be better. Makes you want to clean up. Wake up earlier, eat better, lose the weight, be the responsible joe.

And you start analyzing conversations, analyzing emails. Wanting it to be true. Until one afternoon you're talking and all that holds up the phone is raw desire.

"Don't talk like that, because you'll scare me."

And it's not the sexual tension, because that never changed. It's that overpowering emotional need to know--not think--know, whether I am on your mind the way you sit on top of mine. That need to know what your hair smells like, what your lips taste like. How your shoulders would feel in the palms of my hands.

Because you are exceptional. Because you are irreplaceable. Because there is no other artwork to rival the lines of your face.

So, see me in my powerlessness, see me put my head in the noose for you. Tell me what you were about to say. Finish the conversation, this time.

And tell me what you want.

"What if we took a time out?"

What if you and I revisited the elevator? What if I wasn't just another guy behind a desk? What if we talked beyond the boundaries of movies and professionalism?

What if?