Can we glance downward for a moment? Study the firmness of the uneven surface upon which we stand with locked legs unyielding to schedules and responsibilities, but instead made still by a command not from within so much as an answer to this moment.
Can we arrest our search for the next pleasure, a quick stolen bit of reflection amid the bustle of our constant striving?
Can we just be alone here? Despite all of the traffic and clamor, it’s starlight that threatens to steal us away, even as the glimmer is faint through the choked atmosphere and reflected glow of the city night.
I don’t want them. I refuse all of it because now there is just us, standing firm on these crooked cobblestones laid down by calloused fingers decades prior – now cracked and bruised as much as those hands must have been – and I won’t speak of any of it, chasing their industry away even as I stay fixed on their labor to dissuade words that demand utterance.
Let’s just hold this moment in amber, us without the consequence of each syllable, action or shared breath that exists despite the impossibility of this vacuum; us together with our ears turned away from the constant reminder of this temporary bliss. I could kiss you, lean across the small space between us and steal the taste from lips I crave each day we pretend our lives mean anything else, countless hours, minutes and seconds that scream at me to abandon all of these precious concerns, pull up stakes and answer the call of a beckoning heart.
Let it all fall away like the clothes you hid under from me and the distance that produced us despite the logic that we were intended to be tied close for every breath. They slid off you, and you were revealed naked to me, heart and skin, imperfections of both exposed not for judgement, but for healing; holes and wounds to be filled and healed without consideration, as if I were poured into you, completing us both, the fill between these stones upon which we now stand as I call for the world to arrest its meritless procession and sing for us, a wordless melody of ethereal timbre that wraps around each one of our souls, pulls tight and collapses us into an airless instant where we, as one, share final breath with smiles; knowing we belong where the song began, outside this world and its festooned order, and instead in another made of light where our reflection is a single entity. So let’s wait out this moment, ears raised above the din of progress and focused at the very essence of this air surrounding us – this feeling – awaiting the fragile song calling us home.
I will stay silent. I will not crowd you with proclamations or conclusions. I will not reach for your hand of meet your eyes with mine because I will not say goodbye. Not now, or forever after now. Not ever.
Just listen.