Last night
How do you ooze up to someone? Ask the youth whose hormonally-charged stare snagged my inattentive gaze from across the dance floor last night. He oozed up to me with the stumbling vigour of the woefully inebriated. A rapid five minute exchange later, in which I lied brazenly about my mobile number (or lack thereof), he had pressed his slimy contact details into my reticent hand, and (oozing drunken charm), pressed his other hand too low down my back for anyone's comfort (except possibly his own).
I declined a dance, but he stalked me the entire evening.
Shivered all the way home, my breath congealing into thick white mist that curled lazily around my face like smoke. Deep, fox-shaped shadows danced in my periphery, and frozen, petrified leaves crackled underfoot. Overhead, an explosion of constellations quietly splattered across a cavernous black canvas by some cosmic paintbrush. Silence billowed thickly in soundless blooms.
3am, on a night teetering on the cusp of winter, is my idea of glorious solitude.