Abandon by Nicolette Wong

‘I think you would have been quite beautiful when you were young.’ Your words are a blue haze rocking into the night at a sidewalk restaurant. I look over your shoulder for room to laugh. You, three years my junior, stealing glances at bare legs brushing past and beer in your glass, a moving reflection of your hopes: career, jokes, in a world where life means overlooking others from a heightened plane of safety. At my smile you recoil for a moment before opening up to the embrace that will elude me forever. We are supposed to be friends, for you have never met someone whose soul mirrors yours and who already lives at the other side of the world. I sit before you and crack a peanut. ‘You haven’t met too many people in your life,’ I say. ‘That has nothing to do with it.’ Your phone rings. Requests. Reproach. Mistakes scorching a roll of film, unfolding in a non-existent space. Another barrier to cross while you dream yourself into being a man. Silence cracks across the table, lengthening the time we spend with each other in smirk and qualms. Nothing reigns besides your fear of failure. You shake your head; I put two fingers to my lips. ‘Say something to distract me,’ you ask. ‘It won’t be any different from what you’d say to yourself, or some things you don’t put into words.’ ‘You, a person of many words,’ you say. ‘Shall we dance, then?’

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