(no subject)
She slinked into the velvety darkness of the cafe and flashed a nuclear explosion of a smile at me. I'd known her for years, but we'd never really met till that day. She sat with my notebook and I, refusing to let me retreat into the written word where it's safe. She had these eyes that dared mine to dance, a furtive look; a glance then a stare.
Every word from her lips was a fusillade, a salvo of actual human contact. Her mouth begging, pleading, drawing at my attention as if a cameraman were racking focus upon her. Ushering me to come forward, shake off the trappings of my social lockdown.
It was a battle, a massacre that I was losing. A gunfight to which she’d brought Trident missiles. I launched aloofness, she countered with witty banter. Her Reagan-esque active engagement left me unable to wage the war for my solitude… so surrender I did.
Between flirts and promises made by pupils we watched a board game unfurl nearby. Hotels were bought and raised while a hearts breath away old walls were crumbling under the weight of a sweet downpour. A couple a table away shared a furtive kiss at which we giggled, our secrets were ours alone and the mingling of tongues was vulgarity compared to the songs we sang with our lashes. And vulgarity was something we’d save for later, when the world stopped moving; when mortars and air raids died down.
In the quiet of the cool night air, we both held on a bit too hard to a hug and an evening neither of us wanted to end. And then came the kiss, the mythic kiss… the first kiss. The earth did not shatter, though my knees buckled. The sky did not tremble, though my fingers did.
There was hope in that kiss, and the stoking of a fired that was burning down to embers. She was perfect in that moment, if never again. And I, for my part was there… alive and awake.
So here I sit, in the same café alone and marveling at the grace that life can sometimes bestow in the strangest of ways.