IN THIS UNIVERSE, I am merely a dot. As are you. As is everybody else. Nothing is special — and thereby, everything is special. So when I feel a connection, it feels as though a line has been drawn between two dots. You can imagine this line as linear, horizontal, vertical, curved, whatever you desire. It doesn’t matter. Ultimately, it all connects.

Sometimes, when I look at my reflection in the mirror, I feel utterly beguiled and out of place. Somebody is staring right back at me and all I wish to do is to crawl inside those eyes and see my world from the inside-out. I try, I do but I only ever get so far. Perhaps that is why I like to be held in the gaze of somebody else; I am not so interested in them as I am in what they are getting to see — the magic, the flair, the rage. 

“Do you really see me?” My eyes plead.

“I see you.” The gaze returns. 

I’d like to be taken by the hand and led someplace else; in the sand where I can draw my name in circles, in the lap of a rose petal so I can find meaning, in the center of my mind so I can quietly exist in a room of my own. But here’s the thing, connection is hard to come by. You walk past hundreds of strangers and nobody ever calls out your name. Instead, you see a thousand incandescent faces merging into one, old faces begin to look new but new ones never look old. Or shall I say… familiar? 

Still, I’d like to think that we are all gifted in a sense. Not as star-crossed lovers, no. But surely as star-crossed something. It all seems so enchanting, doesn’t it? To find yourself being mysteriously drawn towards someone else, to feel your body move intuitively before your mind can even make sense of anything, to catch a piercing look in a blurry kaleidoscopic haze of dots. Something that feels hard to explain yet harder to resist. 

So there’s another dot. Right in front of me but not quite. 

Won’t you draw a line between us, my dear? 

A connection has been etched and I erase the line as it's being drawn. Why is that? 

I suppose it’s because when I strike a connection with someone, I find it as bewitching (and disturbing) as staring myself in the mirror. The crowd dissipates and I’m being held in the eyes of another, making my spine wither; not out of fear or excitement but out of sheer curiosity. What do you see? Do my eyes ask for heaven? Do my lips tremble in anticipation? Do the curves of my body dance to the rhythm of your heartbeat? Am I hallucinating for seeing myself in you? The questions hang in uncertainty.
 

A giggle here, a fall there, I stare into the sun from the waves, and a conflict appears. 

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Why are you holding me so? Let me go. 
I wish you’d touch me like it burns to stay away. 
Dot. 

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Why are you looking at me so? Turn the other way. 
I wish you’d bury me in your gaze. 
Dot. Dot.  

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Why are you speaking to me so? Seal your lips. 
I wish you’d kiss me till I ascend. 
Dot. Line. Dot.

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Calloused hands and an unflinching confidence make for a fatal combination, I’d say. 
Never a coward but afraid of me? Ah, the bouts of primal devotion! 
I’d let you hunt me down till the ends of the earth. 

Yet… all I can think of when you’re standing in front of me is how I’d like to caress your cheek. 

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Don’t be confused, this is no confession of love but rather a simple study of the inner self. 
What I’d like to do for another person is what I’d like to be done for me. 
Love and loved. Always. 

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A revelation!
The voodoo devil is a sweet little sucker for companionship. 
So come, find your religion in me. 

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Do you feel the passion? It’s seeping through my veins like lightning. 
Touch me and it strikes. 
Wouldn’t you like to lucid dream with thunder?

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Do you feel the love? I made it with my very own hands. 
Gentle in my animalistic ways, I’d like to nestle myself in the valves of your caving heart. 
I’ll untie you from the strings caught in your wings. 

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Do you feel the fury? Hold my talons and take a free fall from the sky. Down, down, down… 
Let me circle my claws on your back to spell the secrets of my hidden realm. 
Eagles perched on a rock entangled in a visceral image of a simple dot.

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The line begins to pierce through lifetimes and maps, and a compass screeches into dysfunction somewhere. 

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How can one navigate through intertwined lines connected between billions of dots? 
One simply has to hold their gaze from afar.