Restaurant

The first thing she noticed was the tension in his face. His mouth had become serious, expressing a tautness that spoke more of a change in character than of age. It was if someone had placed a placard on their table that advertised in bold red lettering the time that had evaporated since they last saw each other. If he looked older, she thought, it would be easier.

He noticed that she wore the same perfume, which seemed to drift towards him like an invisible, ominous cloud. He breathed it in deeply as if he had a sore chest and was inhaling a balm. He made a forced joke about how the waiter kept tripping on chairs, but when she smiled, he suddenly lost his tongue. He stared at a painting on the wall opposite.

Both of them noticed the other's hands. They formed shapes like branches twisting in a storm. Their hands betrayed their efforts to hide how they remembered the contours of each other's bodies, that each still knew how to mould into the other, so it was as if they were two images softly unfocused into a single form.

The conversation, when it did occur, leaked through to the questions they they had forbidden their mouths to say. Somehow he kept asking about him, and she wondered if she could explain, without it sounding like a consolation, that there had since been many hims, but in her mind they all looked like an empty purple shadow that on lonely nights would be filled by an anonymous body, that would pull away as the sun rose, as if it were anchored to the moon. She once asked about her, but he turned to the mounted painting and was silent.

After they finished their meal, they walked outside. Without looking at each other they turned to the sky, watching as its purple gradually bruised into darkness. Each imagined pulling their hands out of their deep jacket pockets and embracing as if they had become children again, and their arms knew nothing except how to hold on to each other. They imagined kissing each other, without expectation.

When he turned to face her, she was gone. Without remembering walking away, he found himself several blocks from the restaurant. He wondered if he should call her, but he could only see that painting on the wall, and as the stars shivered above him, he sank beneath thick, bold lines that fell over and over each other like waves.

Joshua Croggon