They looked at each other. She was deliberately and fixedly pleasant.
She was afraid of the intensity of her emotion, afraid it would spill over into the space between them and stain the fabric and knots of what they had.
She was afraid of the consequences. She was afraid, that he might reject her, cast her aside in sympathetic apathy, perhaps worse, that he might reciprocate, but not enough, not enough to even whet her appetite for him.
She understood then, how it felt for love to consume someone and for the lover to want, even need, to imbibe, ingest and savour the beloved.
Love was not blind, it only made clearer what there was to be loved. She was afraid of this disabling clarity, its insightfulness only made clearer to her of her own ineptitude and flaws. She was stricken and then blinder than she had been before.
She turned slightly away, her smile firm, yet brittle in its façade, a little cracked at the edges.
They lost eye contact and continued their conversation, so platonic and everyday that she was afraid that it might all have been a game that they had agreed to play and whose rules she did not know.
She was content with this though, to let lie for now, but only just. This scene of summer sun, sun chairs under opened umbrellas and brewed coffees, and the flower in the vase between them. It simmered with her uncertainty and what and how she felt, just under the surface, clenched tightly behind her cracked smile.
She was afraid of the intensity of her emotion, afraid it would spill over into the space between them and stain the fabric and knots of what they had.
She was afraid of the consequences. She was afraid, that he might reject her, cast her aside in sympathetic apathy, perhaps worse, that he might reciprocate, but not enough, not enough to even whet her appetite for him.
She understood then, how it felt for love to consume someone and for the lover to want, even need, to imbibe, ingest and savour the beloved.
Love was not blind, it only made clearer what there was to be loved. She was afraid of this disabling clarity, its insightfulness only made clearer to her of her own ineptitude and flaws. She was stricken and then blinder than she had been before.
She turned slightly away, her smile firm, yet brittle in its façade, a little cracked at the edges.
They lost eye contact and continued their conversation, so platonic and everyday that she was afraid that it might all have been a game that they had agreed to play and whose rules she did not know.
She was content with this though, to let lie for now, but only just. This scene of summer sun, sun chairs under opened umbrellas and brewed coffees, and the flower in the vase between them. It simmered with her uncertainty and what and how she felt, just under the surface, clenched tightly behind her cracked smile.
No comments:
Post a Comment