I Am Now in the Same Room as Him

I see his photograph in the same room as me. The room that used to belong to 17-year-old him.

I hear stories, I put my feet in the shoes of his world, my hands in the pocket of his past and present, I hear lots of things about him.

I’m in the same room as his parents, the same restaurant, I see the similarities, the almond eyes from his father, the sweet smile from his mother, his lean posture from himself.

At night I will be in the same room as him.

How did that make me feel?

About a man, I never met before but only heard of.

A man that old room I’m staying in for the weekend, with the crimson sheets and the awards scattered all around the shelves and walls?

I roam around stores, try on heels and boots, slip on dresses that his mother used to wear.

I am in the house he used to live in, the house he calls his childhood home, the home where his parents raised him and he had wild parties in where girls threw themselves on him and he had first experiences in.

His locked room that he used to take American girls in and hide from bare sight.

The room I am now staying in. And every time I wake up I am confronted with his eyes within pictures of a picture and a haircut that used to be a phase.

I am now leaving the house he used to call home and am entering the room the ball is held in.

The chandeliers are shimmering against my black, tight dress and my Kors shoes are struggling to adjust to my small, shaking feet.

I sit down in the room my family is going to perform in. I feel like a princess, my first ever ball in the room he’s about to enter at his 100th ball.

“He lives in New York,” they say

He lives in the same state as me.

“He lives in Manhattan,” they say

He lives so close to me.

And this weekend I am sleeping

In his old room, he used to sleep in.

And now as he enters I realize

I am in the same room as him.

I am in the same room with the eyes

I have woken up with this morning,

But there’s something different about these eyes from the ones in his room:

They are his real eyes

Looking at me

And then looking away.

Charmingly walking to the crowd and greeting

With his black suit

And his black, delicate, hair.

I am in the same room as him!

His mother rushingly comes to the table

Says “these are my kids,”

And leaves,

And I have no time to introduce myself to him

Or even look at him.

There went my chance

In my first ballroom dance.

His mother comes again and pulls me to the center of the dance floor to dance

And I land in the arms of one

Of his friends.

He was beautiful indeed.

The kind I could have been writing about right now

But am not because

I fell for the eyes that sit in the room

I’m sleeping in.

He was one of his college friends, could he have noticed me then?

Dancing in the crowd with his friend

Pondering whether he should have been

Dancing with me?

I sit down in hopes that I sat close to him.

But he sits in the table behind me,

Yet our backs

And our presences are so close

With only two chairs in between separating us.

I’m in the same room as him!

The night is still young.

He turns to no one,

No girl

Not me in that case

And charmingly walks from table to table-

Expect mine.

There goes my night,

With a few looks,

A dance with his friend

And no words exchanged between us.

There it goes,

I’m back in his old room

The only thing not separating us now

Is the glassed picture in front of me

Reminding of the eyes I may never see again.

He’s back in New York

I’m back in his room

In the room, he grew up in

And the night causing my gloom,

The next day

And the day after the same.

The pictures all over the house

Fail to stop reminding me of him.

The suit, the dark, sweet eyes, the charming smile, the words of the girl I met:

“He’s a typical American, blind and stupid.”

I took it as a compliment, that he was blind for not noticing me - but I still couldn’t help but feel

That if I were some other girl

I could have cut through that blindness

That darkened me to his eyes.

The eyes I keep seeing everywhere.

His mother and his father reminding me of what could have been if I were with him.

The way they could have been treating me

If I were with him - if they knew what I was feeling.

Here I am now.

Leaving the room behind me, the books he’s left behind which seem to haven’t been read, the broken MacBook, the warm, red bedsheets. The photographs.

The memories he’s left behind all left for me to view by his mother.

Here I am leaving the house. The house he grew up in, the living room that led millions of teen and adult parties. The game room he hung out in, the sleepovers, the kitchen, the house he used to call home.

Here I am now leaving the city and the state he used to live in.

He lives in New York.

I am in the same country as him.

I am now in the same state as him.

I am now in the same city as him.

I am now in the same area as him.

I am now in the same room as him.