Six Words

Three seconds ago, he didn't exist. Then I wrote six words, and he suddenly does. Birthdays, parents, nightmares, hair, laughter, pants, he exists in his world just as much as I do in mine.

Three seconds ago, she didn't exist, he wrote. Then I wrote six words, and she suddenly does. She exists in her beautiful world just as much as I do in mine.

He walks to school every day, and then he sits in class and stares at the teachers. They think he's not a very good student because he doesn't listen to the teachers. He watches them. He sometimes writes things, and the teachers think he's taking notes, but really all he's doing is writing beautiful things. Those teachers rarely say anything beautiful, so he rarely writes down what they are saying.

She rides a bus to school. She lives too far away to walk like I do, he wrote. She's a good student, taking notes about history and math and science. She writes and writes, spending all that beautiful energy and time on what is not beautiful. I know she has lovely ideas, sparks in her beautiful head to write about. I see her thinking about them. She never does write them down though, not at school. She thinks, I'm going to wait and write them down at home, but she never remembers them long enough. I watch her wonderful thoughts die one by one, a massacre, every day.

Sometimes when I'm at school, I know he watches me. He stares at me, he peers at me. He is not merely watching, he knows. Sometimes I think he knows me better than I know myself. Those sometimes, oddly enough, come only when I am not taking notes about Charlemagne and square roots and protons. They come to me only when I look up from my notes and see his eyes. He has lovely eyes. My mother always said beautiful people have beautiful eyes. They are windows to our souls, eyes.

There are times when she puts down her pen, turns suddenly, and looks at me, he wrote. Her eyes, I have never in my life beheld eyes that lovely. They make me ache, they are so beautiful. If she were a pair of eyes floating there, I could love her. I could take her and make her mine. There are flashes of understanding in them I know I will never meet anywhere else.

I will never forget the last time I saw him. He looked clearly back into my eyes, and I flew in the crystal blue of his. I have never since or before experienced anything like it. I knew it was all the joys and sorrows of an entire life in one moment. It nearly sent me reeling. I gripped the sides of the desk, feeling the ecstasy was over me, lift me, and then the pain, God, it was awful, wonderful. I wanted to scream, cry, laugh, everything all at once. I remember thinking to myself, I have to talk to him after school.

When the last time came, I knew, he wrote. She turned one day and met my eyes. For one glorious moment, one fleeting eternity, our eyes and hearts met and became one. And although I have never been happier, I have never been more afraid. And then she turned to write down what the teacher said x equals, and she took with her me. I was done. I am done. I ran out of that classroom as my forsaken eyes filled with tears. I never went back.

I turned around again, but he was gone. He no longer exists. I did that, me. I erased those six words.

He never wrote again. He takes notes in class now, writing where he's erased his six words.