Out from her balcony my gaze shoots up across the quiet town, sticky-soft as cobweb, and it curves down between the evening air molecules, towards Shigem and Kim. They’re idling along beside the L-shaped building on Kingsley Street and Fourth Avenue, where they wander to a stop and stand facing each other.
My tune-in on the beach was a shared one, hovering between the two of them … but this time, Kim, my cobweb lands on you alone. With your forehead almost touching Shigem’s, you observe with a tiny shock across the centimetres, more than you’ve ever seen before, that his eyes are the eyes of a girl—there’s a beautiful girl just behind them, inside them. She’s so clear, now you’ve come to see her. Shigem’s lips kiss yours: a girl’s lips, a girl’s kiss, a girl’s sweet breath and gentle touch. It’s exquisite, beyond words.
You lift your face. Cold light stares from a dead-faced moon to the east, where the stars are emerging in the late deep dusk. A breeze whispers, stirring Shigem’s long hair and carrying the faint crash of waves and scent of brine. The moonlight darkens as a ragged stab of cloud pricks the moon’s disc and grows to conceal it. There murmurs a voice in your head, without warning, as if from behind the air, “The eggplants burning by the sea.”
I slide my attention out of Kim and let it drift up and float in the air above the pair of them.
That was the clearest channel I’ve ever had into anyone—and straight through him into someone else.
For more about "The Imagination Thief" by Rohan Quine, see
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