it is seven o’clock. he stares at the clock hanging above the next terminal. it is late, the subway is later. he is unsurprisingly on time. punctuality calls for patience, virtue and other peaceful qualities that equate one to being respectable. expectations, he passes it off as, the station is empty. the minute hand ticks – thundering like steel grating steel – he is unsurprisingly on time.

 

 

he isn’t.

 

 

 

 

 

eleven. it rains, drops pelting the roof. her eyes are on the ceiling, blank and awake and dead. lights from the convenience store across the street flood through her bedside window, yellow with streaks of raindrops creating a mosaic above her bed, above her body. she finds faces in dips and indents, crowds of people filling her room with the weight of intimacy.

 

the rain brings them back. washes them away.

 

 

 

 

 

winter mornings are frost before dew, dew after frost, meticulous patterns that no one stops to realize.

 

they stretch like roots to a trunk – ingrained things that know nothing but down.

 

 

 

 

 

soojung is neon-chalked sidewalks – hopscotch and yes or no games etched into neglected concrete. she watches the hand that hands her the stack of last night’s homework, watches the homework as she reaches out her arm to grab it, watches the window as she passes it forward. he wonders what she sees out there, what she sees in here, what she sees behind closed lids when she blinks – the most private of moments.

 

 

 

 

 

jongdae is a supernova, distant from planets and universes that learn to grow apart. gravity works backwards with him, she assumes, three months into sitting next to him. he is pent up into sharp edges – the line of his jaw, the nerves embossed on his hands as they copy down numerous equations, the duct taped toes of his sneakers. she’s not sure where the tension goes, releases, subsides, but he comes back every day – homework done, tests aced, life on track and intentionally speechless.

 

 

 

 

 

she wonders if he dreams.

 

he wonders if she wonders.

 

 

 

 

 

he wonders in the unconscious way – detached from his body, from his life, from his being – in mental free-fall, where things don’t have to accelerate at nine point eight meters per second squared. unanchored in a sea of people, people whose lives he will never know or understand. he was made this way, he assumes when another numbing day comes and goes, voices in the school hallway muffled like he is underwater. like his head floats above his shoulders, detached from the neck – another world, another universe away: another set of silent expectations he forces himself to come to par with.

 

 

 

 

 

she dreams in her own consciousness. the safe way, she thinks, where sleep is a black hole until six thirty in the morning. she wants to reach the stars, move at her own pace, travel to Alaska and sleep under the northern lights, have her family around her more often – lists of semi-impossible things that she knows, awake, cannot be feasible. but there is always that exception, that small piece of hope that waits to get crushed but takes hold despite it all. that, she thinks, is dreaming.

 

that, she thinks, is what they call a dreamer.

 

 

 

 

 

do tree roots touch one another? he takes out a fresh sheet of notebook paper to start the homework. she stares at the clock. do they know of each other’s existence or only the tree’s?

 

the bell rings. they pass each other at the doorway, then dissolve into a sea of other teenage faces.

 

 

 

 

 

it is seven o’clock again. same time, same place, same story – the train is late. the clock is later. he is unsurprisingly on time. punctuality calls for patience, readiness, control – knowing where and who you are exactly at all times. expectations, his parents have told him. their voices echo through an empty station. the minute hand ticks – braking like steel grating steel – the train has, unsurprisingly, arrived late.

 

they get on at different entrances.

 

 

 

 

 

eleven. she rifles through her backpack for her physics textbook, homework a blank sheet of paper. something sticks between the pages, edges folded against the book. it isn’t hers, she realizes as she pulls it out, graphite stains and worn areas where erasers rubbed too much littering the page. her desk lamp casts orange shadows across her room as she reads the name across the top.

 

 

 

 

 

storms comb through branches, dislodge leaves, soak the ground.

 

they drown beneath the mud.

 

 

 

 

 

do they ever cross each other?

 

(in the saturation of the earth, does it move universes? cells upon cells upon roots reaching down, seeping further down, weight heaving? do roots bend, bend, bend, away from the surface, down to an abyss, down toward each other?)

 

 

 

 

 

she watches him today. when he hands her the homework, when she reaches her arm out to grab it, when she passes it forward. he wonders what she is looking for.

 

 

 

 

 

he is a supernova today. the anxiety seeps into his shoelaces, drips onto the floor, weeping curves against sharp edges. she’s not sure why she didn’t notice before.

 

 

 

 

 

see you tomorrow, she tells him as they pass each other at the doorway. he thinks about the two homework assignments he found on his desk.

 

see you tomorrow, he says back, too quiet for her to hear. she walks away. see you tomorrow, he repeats. she turns back to look at him once.

 

there’s something in those words, laced like harmless poison in the miniscule spaces between the letters.  a promise, he thinks. amazing, how fourteen letters and five syllables can hold so much yet so little.

 

he watches her until she is lost in a sea of faces, until she is past them, until she is not in his line of sight anymore.

 

 

 

 

 

winter mornings are frost before dew, dew after frost, meticulous patterns that no one stops to realize.

 

they are roots to a trunk – ingrained parts of a tree, close enough to each other as they may be.

 

 

 

 

 

(it is seven o’clock. he stares at the clock hanging above the next terminal. it is late, the subway is later. he is unsurprisingly on time. punctuality calls for patience, readiness, control – admirable traits that he doesn’t seem to possess. steel grates against steel – wheels clang to a stop. the train is, unsurprisingly, arriving late.

 

she takes her seat across from his. he doesn’t seem to mind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the dusk is navy.

 

he assumes this is normal.)