Please, Stop Looking At Me

There is something different from the way you look at me. Maybe if I can see myself when I look at you, probably I would see you differently, too. But I can feel it brushes my bones, there is something different from the way you look at me. Maybe it's because we have not seen each other in flesh for more than two good years. You are off collecting possibilities in Uncle Sam's land while I am busy having afternoon tea with the Queen. There is something different when you try to catch my face from the driver's seat. Although I do not time it, it feels like we are on freeze. It's not like you have seen me for the first time and you need to take some time to programme me all over again, it's more like you are being very cautious, as if you are afraid to make mistake in front of me; you are afraid to make me fall in love with you. There is something safe from the way you look at me. It seems like you are finally acknowledging me after all this time, though we had spent the entire senior year of high school sitting next to each other. I almost ask you to stop looking at me because I can feel the mild intensity of your eyes, quietly, seeing through me as if I was an ice cube under the spotlight of Summer's burning sun and you would like to melt, or break, me.

It is not a serious stare, or the opposite. It is enough to start a mystery. To make me wonder. You look at me as if we are on a stake, as if we have something to gamble for and we are at risk. A good risk. I'd like to shake off these thoughts because I am finally in the same space and time-zone with you and I don't want to think about the past or present — I don't want to think at all, for that matter. I cannot deny, your stare is much comfortable than the last time I saw you, which I hardly remember when. Was it two August ago when you drop me off in my apartment lobby and tried to scare me with your made-up ghost story in the elevator? Was it the time when I was pretending to be afraid just because maybe you would walk me till my front door while I hide behind your back and get closer to you? Maybe it's because I forgot how you look at me for so long; and to finally see and feel it again, raises questions in my head. That's not the look of love nor the look of hatred. Maybe that's the look of almost-love. Or maybe, that's not the look of I'm-afraid-to-make-you-fall-in-love-with-me, but instead that's the look of I'm-afraid-to-love-you-back.