Ever tried to draw the man you’re secretly in love with? You can’t seem to get it right because you’ve only met a few times and you don’t remember his face well. You don’t have his picture, and even if you did, you still wouldn’t look at it. All you can remember are the stories of hunting. The animal hunted from the throat, the irony of squeezing life passionately out of it, that wicked taste foaming at the mouth, but you liked it there. He gave you exactly what you wanted—that mad Nani love. Presently, there are no signs that you will die, and he promises that he won’t hurt you.

But perhaps, not ideally, is a love built on the stories of hunting, one that is as silent as an arrow just before the release, a love untold, concealed, that it chips away at the heart just before the climax of whatever prey I once was. It leaves nothing behind for the wings that are half-formed. How do I fly, then? I cannot, and it hurts, but I will not tell him; for that very love that burns me, he will never know. Why, you wonder? I will tell you what I tell everyone: that I don’t do it well, that I run from the stains of fire and old brown things that sweat in the night.

I live in a city of open lovers with homes where the laundry is hung from the inside. How do you expect me to love in a place like this? I have surrendered many times to this infesting love wound that now declares, “You belong to me”. I told Melissa that it doesn’t matter, that “girl, it’s fine”, but the truth is, we’re not ready for each other. I certainly never was, but he is a beautiful man, one that deserves me only when I have become the woman of my dreams, and like a dream, I’ve been having it over and over for the past seven summers. In those dreams, I love him free of insecurities, undoubtful of whether this works out or not. I think about it: when the embers finally pucker, would we really be in love or just pretending to be? Would we kiss with just as much passion as we did last summer? 

Would we nervously hold hands, and would I pull away to wipe the traces of sweat squeeze before placing it right back into the palm of his? Is that what true love would look like, or would we stare into each other’s eyes with honesty, without a lie to be caught in sight? I have only seen the eyes of a truthful man once. After that, I hid my own. Oh, but for this man, I would bare my soul, allowing him to see my eyes over and over. Perhaps only as much as we see the moon—less often, but just enough for us to know that it’s still there. I wait for that day when the night sky bleaches us clear and we can both start over, forgetting that we have loved once. He will take me by the hand down to the lake in front of the log cabin I have always wanted for a home in the woods, undisturbed by loud noises in the city.

Thereafter, we age to passion, soothed by the fact that we both saw this coming. He’ll ignore that he’s now sixty, and I’ll do my best to look twenty-five. Perhaps then we would make love, but would I need to be drunk to do it, or would it be as perfect as I imagine on a rainy evening, when the trees hustle into the night and a half-naked mist covers the surface before cleansing the air. I imagine the songs for flight; I know I do not want silence. Instead, I yearn for the cry of the cicada and the image of her two souls staring into the flames they are both about to become, unravelling into fireflies that hunt in the night, hunting nothing but flesh. 

Suppose that moment comes when I am brave enough to gently place my hands upon his face and hold him in places I cannot say because I am a lady. Hell, maybe I’ll tell him I love him! What would he think of me then? Would he think, oh shit, it’s happening? or would he just want to hold me? But what would he choose? To love me, if not at all, then only in that moment. Perhaps after, he would willingly drop his mask, exposing the boy king, the flawed beauty, the masterpiece. I think of him as a God, precisely one that, for the first time, equals man, no matter how many true inventions he has created. But he is a stranger, one that I hope, when it’s done, will look out into the distance, his eyes fixated, seduced by the growing mesquite. The wet air will burn us to a crease. The morning after, our bodies will lay like cantaloupes, tweaked out of our minds over last night’s raindrops and sweat. I’ll watch him wake up to me before leaning in for a good morning kiss. Will that be the moment when he chooses to love the woman before him, to love what he sees, or hate everything? Would it even matter that I have been there the whole time? Perhaps this is not how any of this happens, but the stories of hunting are real. He hunted me in the night. We unravelled into punctured lungs, and ironically, I tossed the image that maybe we could’ve been victorious. 

Perhaps I was the adulteress who had never known veins to be that slippery or heard of bodies that could drench from the inside. After years of being singed, we age again; his knees buckle, and mine refuse to bend.  On the terrace of our log cabin, he’ll brush my hair and watch as the fine grey falls to pieces. After it’s done, he’ll ski doodle back into the marble kitchen, grabbing his favourite chair before sitting next to me. He’ll swear that he’s unscathed by those mahogany brown eyes of mine or the ash blonde strands of rabbit hairs that hung from the worn-out woodway into the backyard. After, the earthworms and pebbles will come to take all that we have been, all these years exactly at the same time. 

Perhaps that will be the end of our epic romance, and I’ll pinch myself back to existence, coming to terms with the fact that none of it was ever real. Instead, I will know that I’m alone in that same cabin, trying to remember what he looks like, drawing sketch after sketch. I can’t seem to get his nose right. All I can remember is his smile; it’s the most haunting it’s ever been. On this night of hollow moons, there is an old, gathered fire, and a fading sketch of the man I am secretly in love with sits on the mantle in a room filled with drawers. There are plenty of places to hide even the most beautiful truths. Even then, I still won’t tell him. Instead, I sit here and trace the edges of his face with the ends of my cigar. I draw the melanin out of his skin and reign it to a pulse. Outside, the walls exhale our sweat like he is here, in this room of wrinkled pages torn to a slow burn. The sketches lay over tiny flames; I cease to exist untouched by them, but that mad Nani love would have been epic.

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