November 12, 2007
They were unsure of themselves, each other, and so they played out the day platonically � casually, like friends rather than torrid lovers � she, struggling with the urge to touch his hand resting on the bar, he, squelching a comment about how her ass looked in those jeans. They shuffled down the sidewalk, relishing the distracting moments when their lacking conversation was suddenly sprung to life at the notice of a mint Bultaco or a tricked out Norton. She directed her eyes toward the extended swing arms and perfectly polished rims on antiquated wheels but the details she would later recall were in the curve of his neck, the spring in his step and in the bulk of his forearm while he shook hands with a stranger. He seemed to cling to those opportunities when smiling faces forced his thoughts away from her but she dreaded every cursory moment of his obvious ease with others. Each glimpse of his grin made her sick inside, knowing that on this day not a single snaking laugh line was the product of her doing.Later, at his place, while eying the crisscrossing patterns of the kitchen tile, he yawned. A little too emphatically. Leaned against the counter she followed the interest of his gaze and felt the weight of the room silently sink down upon them. And there they remained, for the brief duration of their lives to change, the evening tip-toeing through the window, with the burden of opposites caught carefully in their throats. He was thinking he had to let her go, a sort of dual-purpose release, but he simply stated that he was tired � perhaps another night, he said. She said she understood, yet inside she was swirling, sideways, delirious and thinking she was not ready.
She was not ready to go home. She wasn�t even fucking close. She screamed this in her car � the windows up, the music loud, the myriad of words unspoken now spitting against her windshield. She fumbled with her cigarettes and the placement of her feet, the world outside so disgustingly silent compared to the rage encapsulated in that small space. Her ears splitting from the fury and the fire and the broken words from the radio and her voice and all visions of their substance these past few years while just beyond the glass the turned leaves fell softly to the ground. How she always envied the hush of it all � that space outside of her own head.
There it was again, the calm of her better judgment swallowed up by the frantic glints of hope she carried in her eyes and those she thought she saw in his. There it was, the potential, less than twenty feet away, screaming to be salvaged, begging to be heard, dying just to see and still so out of reach.