Blue eyes. Pristine clear blue eyes floating alone in a hazy minute with no distractions. Sharla waits. If she doesn't move at all she can hear soft breath coming from lips on the other side of the room. It is a breath she can almost feel warm on her throat. Underneath the haze. Slowly a hand comes into focus. Strong fingers tapping silently on the desk underneath them could grasp her hard enough to feel the blood stirring hot in her veins. Solid knuckles form bridges. Sharla looks on at the quiet magnetism. She sees the hand. Blank air. She sees the eyes.Sharla's own fingers tremble across her neck and find the safety of the metal resting on her chest. She presses hard, tracing the outline over and over again until she is secure. There it lies, imprinted on her skin, below her collerline, unwavering.
Sharla studies the dimples in the flawed white top of the desk with intensity, avoiding the mud colored plastic chair back in front of her, avoiding the split ends of hair clinging to the plastic, avoiding the wrinkled blouse in front of the hair, avoiding the seemingly endless rows of earth toned students that remain perfectly clear in her vision until her eyes abruptly reach the haze at the far end of the room and are halted by the image of two perfect, disconnected, blue eyes. The eyes smile. Cold air pierces Sharla's hands and she twists them, wrings them, until they are hot in her lap. The smile becomes a mouth. Firm lips part and the breath forms soft rings in the air. Playful curvature in the lips travels through the haze and lands like a pinch on Sharla's neck. She reaches up and confronts the cold metal obstacle in her path. The body of her savior twists around gold plated posts, and the impression on her chest burns her. She grasps the solid medallion and wishes it would fall apart in her fingers but it doesn't. Instead her fingers seem to dissolve and this thing, a reminder of gravity and religion, falls back against her body with a heavy thud and sticks.
Something in Sharla is out the door and something is Sharla is still in the chair. Something is still in the haze. Cement walls and strong oak doors behind her, Sharla is still seeing lucid blue eyes stark in a fog. The haze lifts, for its blissful minute has ended, and the vision of the blue eyes runs now into the once distorted image of silky blonde curls atop smooth white shoulders. The now delicate ear lobes from across the room balance clear pearl studs as the alluring smile is somehow frozen in place but also gone. Sharla stops for a moment but then quickens her pace away from the doors, running through the interminable hallway, away from temptation. She longs for the haze to return, but can see only clear, salient, blue eyes.
