"Between the Gaze and the Fall"
The Student:
She watches me.
Not like the world does casually, fleetingly.
No she watches me like I'm prey
and she's the velvet predator who already owns my last breath.
In class, her fingers wrap around the marker
like it's a sin to hold something so delicate.
She writes on the board, slow and elegant,
and somehow I'm the one unraveling.
Her glance slides across the room
and lands on me like a whisper with teeth.
It lingers
long enough to scorch my spine
but never long enough to quench the ache.
She asks a question,
but it's the curve of her lips that holds the real answer.
The one I'll never say out loud,
not while the room breathes around us,
not while I'm still pretending
I don't imagine those hands wrapped around my neck
and her voice in my ear,
saying my name like a curse she's too proud to break.
I think she knows.
I think she wants me to know she knows.
And I think
I want her to break me first.
The Teacher:
She thinks she's subtle.
She doesn't realize every twitch of her wrist,
every breath she steals in my direction
I collect them like pearls I plan to break against her throat.
She doesn't see what I see.
The way she leans forward like she's listening,
when really, she's begging me
not with her voice,
but with the tremble she hides behind lowered lashes.
I've ruined better girls than her.
Brighter. Louder. Easier to forget.
But none of them ever looked at me like she does,
like I'm the question she'd rather drown than answer.
So I play my part.
I draw equations and metaphors,
but all I'm teaching is hunger.
She doesn't know I'm not staring
I'm choosing.
One day,
she'll stay behind after class.
Her voice will crack like soft glass,
and I'll be patient as a storm,
inviting her to fall
No, not fall.
Sink.
Because I won't touch her first.
But when I do,
she won't remember the last time she ever wanted anything else.