I hung around the edges of the crowd. I didn't want to push my way through others to get to him. But mostly, I couldn't have stood his notice. His eyes hurt me. He would look around constantly, giving his eyes to as many as he could. I saw his glance seeking mine as he looked for me, and I averted my eyes every time, which I knew he must have known. I felt we had a secret connection when he looked toward me and I felt him see me look away. I felt his acknowledgment, and I felt he agreed not to look at me, but to hold my little presence in his heart anyway. And in this way, in my fantasized agreement with him, I could feel he was noticing me in his heart all the time he wasn't looking at me, which was all the time. I was so shy! I loved having this secret relationship with him, the two of us secretly together, in a crowd. I knew he was thinking about me, as he touched children's heads and put his hands to women's cheeks, and brought his beautifully manly face very close to men's faces. I saw him put things from his eyes into other men's eyes. I saw women burst into hot tears, grinning with their faces so suddenly pink and alive with emotion pouring out of them. I saw them laughing and crying at his touch. I saw life too big to be contained in one person, gush from a body when he looked in their eyes.

The last time I saw him, he was skipping down a hill like a girl, with pink socks on his hands, which he was playfully waving. He was heading straight for me, and my heart leaped with unbearable hope. I held my breath as he reached me. He didn't look in my eyes, but he passed very close to me, closer than he was to anyone else in that moment. I could feel the man of him, and as he skipped by, he tapped me on the top of my head with his sock-hand, and I gasped with joy, and then he was gone. Only he wasn't gone, because he had put something of himself into me. Something had entered my head and gone into my belly, and my eyes rolled back and I began to laugh because I could feel him as the fire in my belly. Oh how I wanted him to stay that day he went away.