the kiss

Then she kissed me. Without any warning, any invitation, right there in the middle of the street, stuck between a supermarket and a train station she walked up and kissed me. She kissed me like we had been kissing for years. The kiss spoke of time wasted yet with sweetest promises of time to yet be, it proclaimed freedom and vitality and singularity of purpose, it sang with passion and abandon and wanton disregard. At that very second my mind was filled with only her, in that instant of purest clarity it was like all creation had fallen away embodied in this one perfect moment, this one perfect kiss and her, the deliverer thereof. I stood there as the clear summer’s day died, casting a rich red and purple haze across the western sky and for the first time I saw clearly everything that we were. Or rather, everything that she was. Her smile and the way she turned into my hand as I run my fingers across the back of her neck, her eyes that blazed with passion as much when we argued as they shone when she laughed. And her laugh, oh I missed her laugh. Had it really been that long? I feel like I’ve just come up for air, like a prisoner released from confinement beneath the earths surface. An eternity apart then a chanced encounter had led to this and here we are. I didn’t realise how much I missed her until now. I ache with the suddenness of this realisation and at the same time I am soothed by her very presence, her scent, her warmth. Torturous in its intensity but completely irresistible (perhaps I cannot will not resist) I commit myself to a total surrender to her. It is then I know that I cannot be without her. And it is only then I know that I can not be without her. But all is not well. In this moment of clarity, this moment of bare, brazen, introspective honesty, I see one more thing. I see that we cannot be together, I see why we drifted apart, I see passion lost, hearts betrayed and tears cried in secret places and words, angry and contorted, spoken in public. Tears gather like little storm clouds in my eyes and as much as I will them away with lids firmly shut reality will not be denied. And in that moment I do the cowardly thing, I take the easy route. I give in to the perfect kiss, I give in to the perfect embrace and as I listen to it tell the story of us I kiss her in return. And we draw apart.