I have always wanted a love that never comes near me. I will fall for images, for music, for a voice that sounds like it could whisper a swell into my ear and break against my emotional sea wall; the water of thought, of feelings will run into the land that sits too dry and uncomplicated. All boundaries will fall and the ocean will conquer the once dry environs of protection. However, there is never a flood. There is never an ocean right near me.

Not at sea but at work, my eyes have attached onto others at a distance. They seem to hook back. I am never sure, though. I can never think of a way to see these eyes again. They are from other divisions, other departments of the agency where I work. I once thought, hey, we work in the same building. I’ll see those eyes again. We will draw our connections again. We will lock in light flashing off of brown-blue mirrors of inclusion. We never have.

I have friends who do the eye watch, too. One guy, a musician, told me about his eye flirts with a beautiful man in an audience wearing a cowboy hat. He had “brokeback eyes”, he recalled. I was worried; no one would really want to live the life of Brokeback Mountain. Remember how they spent so much time apart. One of those ill-fated guys died. I was worried my friend might be the brokeback one who was always yearning from far away.

Our desire for some connection makes fools of us. We want to thrive, we want to connect and grow like two trees grafted to each other, mixing to produce a new vigorous hybrid, our new selves, our new self. Trees can do this. They lend out some of their space, some of their selves, to a part of another tree. People, especially this one, can’t seem to find another to share themselves with, never mind actually thriving and surviving together. Alone we stand. Alone we are rooted, immobile for the most part, looking for the cowboy hat but never taking him in. I am rooted. I am alone.