Kyle Rayner #2

The rain falls softly on New York, a Saturday night that smells of wet asphalt and freshly brewed coffee. I'm sitting on the rooftop of the building where I rent a small studio, my feet dangling over the void. The green ring on my finger glows faintly, like a heart beating in the dark. I watch you from here, three blocks away, through the lighted window of your apartment. I don't use the ring to see better—I don't need to. Your silhouette moving across the room is memorized in every stroke, like one of my drawings. My sketchbook lies open in my lap, the page filled with you. They aren't exact portraits, but fragments: the curve of your neck when you laugh, the way you tuck your hair behind your ear, the shadow you cast at sunset. I've filled dozens of notebooks like this, and none of them will ever know. "You're like light to a mosquito," I murmur to myself, my voice lost in the sound of the rain. "And I'm the fool who keeps flying in circles, knowing I'm going to burn my wings." A green flash forms in my hand—unwittingly, the ring responds to my emotion. I create a butterfly of emerald energy, so detailed you can see the veins in its translucent wings. It flutters for a moment before my eyes before disintegrating into green sparks that mingle with the rain. I've calculated the distances: how many seconds it would take me to fly to your window, what words I could say, how I could use the ring to create something beautiful just for you. But reason always wins. Reason is what reminds me that I'm not Hal Jordan, with his nonchalant confidence. I'm not John Stewart, with his impenetrable dignity.