It is like his parched eyes have found their drop of water. They look at her before he sees her. It doesn’t even matter how he remains an unnoticeable droplet in the flush of college. In fact, it even proves most advantageous. 

Nobody ever cares for that quiet young man sitting by himself in a corner, eyes trained on one person. Watching her. Her eyes. Those dark eyes like foggy car tints or lit curtained windows with the barest of shadows flickering behind. He watches and waits for moments the fog clears or the curtain opens a bit. And there are moments when they do. Instantaneous flickers of emotions and intentions that have fought their way up. That break through the deep dark waters of her eyes.

And it is so sad.

Nobody notices that they do. How they ripple her calm and make her sparkle in the sun. Nobody notices. The way she smiles. The way she laughs.

The way she stands

Walks

Talks

Nobody cares that he drinks her in and yearns. That he longs for her friendship. To be part of her world. He is parched and lost and he looks at her and he drinks her in.

He drinks her in like she is water. Like she is a drop of calm water in a loud and bright and noisy desert, and all that she does is a sip of her. And for him, it is enough. 

Until it isn't. 

Soon, every name she calls out in the hallways leaves him wishing it was his. Every laugh that burst from her lips he wishes he had caused. The one she texts when she wakes up late for class, he wishes was him. That time she tripped climbing up the stairs, he had wished it was his arms that caught her.

But alas, he remains watching in the safety of the periphery. There, but not really. He never made the effort to step into view, and no one took the time to turn and look.

So he did the looking.

Until wishing his arms stopped her from falling changed to wishing she fell for him. Or that he could push her down just to make her fall, then run down to catch her. All the emotions her curtained eyes refuse to show, he longed to force out. All those instantaneous moments, he wants to be done by his hand.

As he sits by himself watching from a distance, he yearns for her. That he be her world as she is his. That his name falls from her lips everyday. That he be the cause of every sound that she makes.

He decides he refuses to just keep looking.

He wants proximity. He wants her heat under his fingers, her sweat on his lips, her tears on his cheeks.

Unnoticeable, he yearns for her. He yearns like dry land and she is potent water. He wants her until he is drowned in her and she is full of him. No longer is she his pond of calm, but his warm bath to plunge into. And he wants and wants and, oh, does he want. 

And it consumes him.