Overactive Imagination

It's like this every time. The pounding heart, the irregular breathing. The stupid smile that creeps over her unwilling face. She has no doubt, either, that if she were to look into a mirror, her cheeks would be flushed and her pupils blown wide like she's received a head injury. Despite the protestations of her mind, every physiological reaction is intensified to a point of ridiculousness. One well-placed comment can set her cheeks aflame and her heart a-racing. It's nearly unbearable.

She hopes it's all magnified in her mind. Maybe, if she's lucky, only a few particularly astute people will see. Perhaps the involuntary glances will go unnoticed by most (one, in particular) and she will make it through another afternoon. After all, she knows it's useless to feel this way. For her attention to be noticed--much less shared--is as likely as sus scrofa spontaneously sprouting a pair of aerial appendages.

Nonetheless, evening comes and she succumbs to her overactive imagination. She recalls a moment when he'd grabbed her hand, trying to make a point, and she'd jerked away, fingers tingling as if she'd touched a live wire. In that split second, she'd been certain he knew. Or that late night drive, awakening to find she's accidentally made his shoulder her pillow. To wake to his eyes boring into her; it's easy to release the flight of fancy.

But these thoughts are reserved for midnight solitude and the dawn comes all too soon. So she tosses her head and laughs, promising that at the next midnight, she will not think of such things again, knowing, even as she says it, that it is a lie.

Such are the cruel tricks of an overactive imagination.