He was so much something she could never grab onto. Something altogether other, slipping through cold night air with the same movements as the steam of exhaled breath. He was as able to be held as a shuddering winter sigh.He was something of a still life, a tall figure somehow too opaque to be real, more a life-sized painting than anything else. He would stand so still, his right hand lifting and falling, bringing the smoking white stick to his mouth and back to his side, while his eyes stared off somewhere that she could never pinpoint. To her, he was always watching something, someone. To her, he was always somewhere else.

She was nothing more than a photographer. She would stand there and watch him watching nothing and click, the shutter of her mind would snap open-shut in a space less than time, and he would be recorded there forever, burned into gray matter. Her pictures of him were blurred and clear at the same time, like tunnel vision frozen for a moment, and you can't tell if he's moving or if you are. She could never tell if he was moving, or if she was.

It all started to change when she watched him watching her. When she realized that the flick of his eyes that she had cherished mere seconds ago was directed in her direction. When she looked up and green met green in an intense clash of something she couldn't name. When she realized he was walking towards her.

When she ran.

And when he saw her the next day it was a look of inquiry, a head tilt meant to question without words. And all she could do was tilt her head back. He raised an eyebrow and walked over. It was that day that she first learned his name. She swore she would never tell.

A name, he told her, is the key that unlocks the tiny box storing your soul so deep inside. Telling someone your name is giving them the key, and he wasn't about to give the key to just anyone. He was very concerned with things concerning his soul. A camera, he told her, steals your soul when it takes pictures. He did not let anyone photograph him.

And in her mind she thought, I have stolen your soul for months without you knowing. Your soul is burned into the images in my head. But she didn't tell him that.

He never said hello, just appeared out of nowhere. He never said goodbye; she would blink and then he was gone. He was a confounding being, always knocking her off balance, always keeping her teetering on the edge. She was afraid to blink around him, afraid to look away from that green-brown stare, because she never knew when he would disappear again. She was afraid to leave the house, leave the porch, leave the classroom. She was afraid to move anywhere because she might just miss him. Because he only appeared when he wanted to, and it was up to her to stay still.

You shouldn't move, he told her. The world is always ready to come to you.

She never saw him with anyone else, just standing and smoking or sitting across from her, pinning her with his gaze and daring her to think further out of the box. She never saw him travel; he was just there. She never saw him cry, or giggle, or get confused. For her, he was always calm and composed.

She began to believe he might be real when he invited her to his place. When he cooked them both dinner and talked for hours. When the candles began to burn low.

He whispered so softly to her, that she thought it may be her imagination. That in the low candlelight, after too many glasses of wine, it was all just a fantasy and she would blink and he'd be gone. But then she felt the brush of his lips against her neck, and nothing has ever been this real.