A couch for two. A ratty old couch, with an aging floral
print, swimming in lint and tattered pillows. A couch for two. You’re
both
tired from walking: these long bookshelves have made you weary. Sit
for a while.
A couch for two, and no more. You’ll sit close, but
only by
necessity. You’re only friends. Isn’t that what she said? “Can we just be friends?” Didn’t she puncture
those words with falling tears? Didn’t you kiss
her then, in her most vulnerable moment, what you felt so sure would be
the
last?
There have lately been signs. Brief touchings of
skin,
filling just enough of a moment to be doubted an accident: a flash, a
bright
moment of true and naked emotion, flaring for a single heartbeat and
then
quenched in the cold rational water beside
love’s iron forge, crystallized in
its infant form, a tiny memento of a future denied out of fear.
Your world is shrinking. All that
attract your attention now are
the girl, the couch, and the shelves nearby. And the latter are slowly
diminishing
in your sight, for in this sudden society of two the taboo on
hand-holding has
silently fallen away.
Time, too, has lost its gaudy throne in your
mind. You may
in fact wake hours later, as though from a dream, to find the two of
you beautifully
knotted and curled as a Mobius strip: no discernable beginning or end.
You may
kiss her neck, put your face to its warm crook and hum
Something in the way
she knows,
And all I have to do is think of her
Something in the things she shows me
I don't wanna leave her now
You know I believe and how
And you will hope that she knows you intend these words not
in quote marks, not someone else’s, but as coming directly from your
own heart,
that when you say ‘her’ you mean ‘you,’ and she will go mmm, and
smile and when
you look out from this couch for two you will see curious pairs of eyes passing
by, trying not to stare, pairs of eyes looking in on this separate and
alien
world of ad hoc love.
Because that is what this is: love. Neither of
you will say
it, but this is as real as it gets, folks. The store closes
at 9:00, but that
is meaningless now. You have broken into a new and temporary world,
contrary to
the existing order. You have stepped in a rain puddle and fallen into
the
center of the world. You have found love on a couch for two.