Strangers Who Once Kissed

Six months ago I didn't think that I would be crossing the street just to avoid asking 'How are you?'

Two years ago, I knew with such innocent clarity that never a day would go by that your name wouldn't cross my lips.

But the unthinkable has come to pass, and I see you hurrying down the sun dappled avenue, towards the tube station where you will be lost forever, and I turn the other way.

You've seen me.

Of course you have seen me.

Our eyes have met across tumbling leaves and autumn chills, we have paused, locked, the wind tugging at our coats trying to make us turn away.

And I do

I can see in your disappointed face that I have turned my eyes away from you, the whites of them sparking with recognition, but the centre, the bit that matters, flickers away in deliberate ignorance. The world has slowed around us whilst we pause, but as I offer you my shoulder reality catches up with us. A shoulder that was never before turned coldly to you. A shoulder that you spent many hours  with your head laid upon. The very shoulder you cried upon during those lazy summer nights, is now turned to rebuff you, and push you away without words.

I feel you hesitate behind me, and I know that I have every chance and every reason to turn back and fall into your embrace once again. But I don't.  Living another world miles away from here you would have walked me to the tube before turning around and retracing your own steps in the opposite direction towards your office. I would have rested a hand lightly on your shoulder whilst you leant down to meet my lips in a fleeting kiss with a shared smile. With instantaneous acceptance I realise that somebody else would have sealed your lips against the harsh day with a butterfly whisper. The sleeve of another caressed your cheek this morning. And I no longer mind.

You don't say my name now, here, in this sun dappled avenue, but we both know you want to. It used to be so natural for you to lean down and swing my heavy bag up onto your shoulder. Releasing it only at the last possible minute when we go our separate ways for the day. We should have realised...should have known even then...that we were headed in different directions.

Instead of brushing loving fingers through my hair, you comb it with your indifference. I want to ask you if you knew – if you had some inkling at all – that we would be like this today, all those years ago. But I know what your answer will be. I know it as well as I know the curve of your body against mine, or the creases across your face when you dream. I know it like I know the river of scars, tributaries, following the lines of your spine. It's as familiar as breathing, drinking, sleeping, talking...yet in the moment I turn from you, I feel like I could never do any of those simplistic tasks ever again.

If I had asked you, the answer would have come from the deepest of voices, spilling over me like a warm summers evening.  So I didn't ask, and you didn't tell, speaking would have moved us one step closer to being. And being with you was something I had learnt to not want.

A car chokes into life and people push their way briskly through crowds of children skipping to school. Your gaze upon my back burns and I take a step in my direction to break the bonds we no longer share. Our hearts pull us together, but our brains know that this isn't so anymore.

The air between our retreating back chills once again as we formulate our own paths, trodden in familiar patterns, but never the same. An unspoken goodbye hangs there, and in distance months it would have served as the clarification we both needed. But this is no longer required.

We continue, two separate souls once bound by love, in opposite directions, because  that's where we are meant to be.