I stare at a white washed wall with a tack
tensioned through it.
“Why are you staring?” she asks, though I don’t know
why she’s female.

Her calm envelops me, even
though I don’t know her.
She is an oceanic presence,
pristinely pure.

“Will you be mine alone?” I ask discreetly.
I hope for ethos because logos has failed
me before.

No response is necessary though; I
see the titillation on her torso.
He’s tactile but a pain
in my side,
teething on her ocean.

With the closest affection, I am yet, afar.
“I stare because I love you,” is all I have left
to say.

***

R. J. Amador

R. J. Amador is a native Californian conducting graduate research in renewable energy systems and climate change economics at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He’s only recently begun writing per the advice of his seven year old cousin, Andrea. She asked him almost one year ago why he didn’t “write more stuff down because people would really read that stuff”. He felt compelled and inspired to write some stuff down, based on the vivid extremes that affect individuals in their daily lives. He hopes that his work will awaken an understanding that most people’s “mundane” existence is, in fact, volatile, amazing, and very much alive. Who is he to contradict the unabashed counsel of a seven year old?