we're sitting at our favourite restaurant. you're talking to me. I'm staring at the two kids that are sitting at our favourite table. oh how I wish they'd leave. they laugh as the chairs squeak. and I wonder if the window by their side noticed that it is not my laugh. or yours. that there's been an intrusion. that it is out seat. maybe if we'd walked faster, we'd have gotten here before them.
you look at me, concerned, as you take my ever shaking hands into yours. you ask me how I've been. but all I can think about is how I don't know how many steps it'll take to get to the door from this table. that it would've been 28 steps, to run down the stairs to the road. i could do that in 20.5 seconds, I've recorded.
but now, I don't know. i don't know. i don't know how to run away if you suddenly tell me you don't love me anymore. I think about it before every date. but this time, I suddenly don't know where to run.
the kids start laughing again and a lady, preassumably, their mother, brings them a tray of fries and coke and coke and fries.
I try to look at you, but I no longer know how to. you're so full of light, you blind me. and I wish I could tell you that. I wish I could tell you that I know we're all gonna die, but somehow your smile makes me a little less dead everyday and if reversing someone's phenomenon of existence isn't pure magic, I don't know what is.
we walk up to leave.
35. it took 35 steps to get from that table to the road. it's raining. you're two steps away–you're always two steps away. there are three layers of clothing between my hands and your skin. it takes me four syllables to tell you "I- I love you." we walk on.
you're talking about the how the sky's never been black in this city, a different colour everytime. how it looks like ashes tonight, as if it's mourning the death of someone dear. you try to extract meaning out of this dull, mundane, grey sky.
and I realize, this is why I fell in love with you. you extract poetry out of me. out of this grey layer of flesh, floating on a frame of hollow bones.
suddenly, you look at me. and I could almost hear you loving me back.
and in that moment, I realized
the number of steps it'd take to get home
was two.
