inconvenient truth

with a twitch of his lip only i would notice, he took my hand and held it up to his lips for a moment as if to ask my permission. it was warm and dry and steady. i nodded. he squeezed it once then turned around, still clutching my fingers. then with a confidence only known to someone as sharp as himself, he marched on, parading me through a honeycomb of bodies and faces so thick and binding and beautiful i forgot to breathe. waltzing our way through the menagerie, i followed with blind surrender, wading by the naive faces of youth and weathered eyes of old, hollow cheekbones and full bellies, past the spirited and the tired, too. the crowd cast a bustling, primordial chaos on the late afternoon that lit me up like a sparkler. it was the kind that reminds you of an existence long before you came along. when life was simpler and people had time to waste on silly things like scouting their next conquest through a break in threadbare clothes hung on stretched lines. i sent a silent praise to the universe– for this, and for the electric assurance of his palm in mine.

he stopped then– right in the middle of all the madness. his eyes flickered across the street. suddenly a body struck me, jolting me forward. a girl no older than 16 quickly clutched my elbow in apology and shot me a look of bashful excuse before dancing off with her friends. i felt my hand being pulled, this time with more urgency, and off we were. first to the right, then down the main path through a packed lemon stand, and out to a tall stone wall that must have been there for four hundred years. he situated me up against the cold stone, his face to mine. shielding me from the crowd with his body, he picked up a lock of my hair, giving it more consideration than it was due. i caught my breath and looked up. with a neediness uncommon to him, he searched my eyes as though they were crystal balls of glassy, inconvenient truth. there was a pain present. the kind that keeps you up at night, a dull ache in your lower stomach, indicative of a winter of solitude. or maybe it was the years wasted ruminating on the ever present but never realized. whatever it was, it had come to it’s crescendo.

he grabbed my face in his hands and held my temples, grazing his thumb over my right eyebrow before pulling my mouth to his. hot, velvety lips discovered mine with such hunger, that i thought, if he never stopped, i’d be content in this little corner of the universe forever.

and to think all this time, accompanied only by his perfectly monogrammed luggage, he stranded himself along the banks of a passable river, staring across. while i stood waving from the opposite shore for the better half of a decade.

finally he tore his lips from mine- catapulting me back to earth. he squinted his big brown eyes and a slight grin started forming at the corner of his mouth.

it’s good to be home, he said.