excuse me

I told you you will never find this, let alone read it, let alone know the words were directed at you. I'm often skittish, flinching from any form of attention the same way others would bleed from an assault. But the lamps of your eyes are warm and instead of shrinking, I rise to the challenge of your Koi-fish stare. It amuses me how you giggle at my joke, how you loom so large in the periphery of my vision, how your entire life is a mystery but a welcome one, something I can inquire about. I would like to tell people why you hold my attention so much, but at the heart of this curiosity is a blue cooking fire, no greater than my palm and just as plain. I want to understand you; I am holding you now under scrutiny, under the lamp of my own eyes.