JunkDror

Get swept off your feet and you’ll land on your head.

Some wondrous people have a natural magnetism to them that the shrouded often envy. It is inexplicable and unmerited. Almost by birthright, divine predetermination, they are meant to energetically align with every exasperating breath that shares their gaze. Many of ostracizing origins and subtle seeds do not behold this alluring quality. Though not a rare gift, it is seductively anchored and, most of all, captivatingly cruel. 

Charm, with its wit and grit, gracefully steers a path of undeniable luck. They spark a fluidity in conversation with the most unsuspecting characters and appear at the forefront of exciting, unpredictable excursions. Everything you claim to experience “in another life” they do so before your eyes, and with annoyingly more passion, certainty, irrevocability. Charm then, in all its glory, is more than a mere attractiveness or entrancing presence, but a tangible manifestation of endearing communicability and uncanny sophistication. 

Still, without recourse, their exhaustion is imminent; an ember away from burning down the room they so magically light up. But curious and engaging creatures, they are difficult to tame. Easy to approach–sure. Caringly attentive–yes. Permanently yours? Never. So, you sit back and observe as they swerve through swarms of migrating sardines also preying on their rightful turn to speak with an idol of such grandeur. Eventually, in your crossing of paths, you will confuse their flirty rapport for a deluded and consuming likeness almost too devotional to feel untrue. By your next chance encounter you’ll be excited to rehash your last topic of conversation like old friends. Though Charm, in frequent embarrassment, must reproachfully ask for a reminder of your name. Because for them, on your fleeting night of twiddling thumbs and harmonious words, it was just another day charismatically floating by. 

What a mortifying divination of negligence when Charm exposes their insincerity, and a stinging pain of thoughtful precision when their mysticism does not choose us–not in the long-term, at least. In uncertain dismay we attempt to decipher what went wrong, whether it was their indifference or our ghostliness. Regardless, the self-reflection that follows is punishing and punitive because it reveals not just our longing to be noticed, but the vain and shallow depth of that longing–the need for a validating sign that we may be bright enough to leave a trace on their overpopulated memory. 

In the wake of their humanliness, Charm discomfortingly projects the worst form of invisibility, the one that stares at you straight in the face with dull eyes and lingering fatigue. The deepest betrayal then lies not in their forgetfulness but in our doom to live in the abyss of the forgotten. We let ourselves be fueled by glimpses of their affection and imagined significance without the promise of permanence, but with the hope of being the exception. And with Charm’s otherworldly authority, who better to quench our thirst to be seen, to feel remembered, and to objectively matter.

To think commitment is not far beyond their reach is optimistic–that there is a settling hand to grasp their restlessness, a tender embrace in their stifling midst. Even more miraculous would it be if the grounding hold came from the dungeon of shadows, from the shunned stray who lives in loud solitude. Praying on this exchange of pitiful mercy for nestling tranquility is risky in the trials of the heart and, arguably, desperation in its purest form. Yet, the game of weighing in and waiting out for a resonant catch keeps the psychosis alive and starving.

May the elegant mystic shed an unwavering light for its bashful pupil, and the enduring recluse share a fortress with its turbulent orb.