The strumming of a guitar fills the silence. Her arm touched his elbow ten minutes ago. It hasn’t touched it since, and she inched her body away from him a whole two minutes ago. Her gaze fixates on the opposite wall. As he moves his hand to grip his glass, some of his sweater brushes her upper arm. Her gaze narrows. He grips his glass tighter.
The man in the argyle sweater thinks about how his necktie is too tight and how his hair is tickling his forehead and how his sweater is itching the skin above his wrist. His thoughts stray to the distance between him and the woman. He tugs his thoughts away from her with a firm hand.
Her hands are delicate and bird-like. His are scarred with disproportionately long fingers. He imagines them intertwined: fire-red fingernails against his cold palms. “Imagines” implies fantasy; the image he pictures used to be reality. He loved the way their hands fit together. The bar seems to blend into a uniform brown, and his ears block out the melodious guitar music. Only images of her flood his mind, but he refuses to move his gaze from the corner of the table. How did he come to sit so far away from her?
His stare appears vacant of her; his thoughts are anything but. She rises from her chair, leaving her drink untouched. The curling feather of her hat brushes the top of the doorframe. Their thread snaps. The uniform brown of his surroundings breaks into individual objects, and his thoughts are no longer of her. The strumming of the guitar fills the silence.
Sachi Laumas ’26 (slaumas@college.harvard.edu) writes Arts for the Independent.