By day, a delicate, unnoticed plant on my desk. By night, a hunched over person appears on my wall.
It takes two to tango and my partner is the shadow of the plant- a man, somehow, next to me.
Do I face him and protect myself? Do I turn away and ignore his existence?
I cannot turn off the lights. Then he is everywhere yet nowhere.
We have never completed the dance and we never will.
My thoughts wander. I think about semantics,
I think about nonsense I don’t
even know I’m
thinking
about

But then a car passes by my window, headlights make him move and grow and run at me.
The crescendo abruptly ends, the unexpected jive has left me breathless.
Go to sleep. You’re 16. I tell myself it’s nothing but
a delicate, unnoticed plant on my desk.

                                                                He whispers, “what if?”