Potential
In the back of your mind you know this is forever. As big as the city was, the country is a great deal larger. You can’t escape the feeling that everything you see in that moment will never be seen again by you or anyone. When you walked with her, you made a point to walk on the outside of the sidewalk. It was an archaic gesture of masculine protection. You flinch to even recall the feeling of pride you felt at doing right by the old-fashioned bigots that raised you. You don’t know if she appreciated the thought, but you suspected she might.
You appreciate something quaint and nostalgic about standing out in front of her house, the pale yellow of the streetlamps flooding the gloam and casting intricate tendrils of light across the gilded strands of her hair. She embraces you and something is complete within you for that moment. There’s an urgency undercutting the moment. You begin to understand she means to say goodbye forever. She knows this moment is your last.
You hold her with a stream of thoughts burning through your itching mind. You wait for her cue to relent. When she finally relaxes her grip, you pull back. In a moment, your eyes connect and you read volumes in the space between. You lean in to kiss her and her body twists away from you. The spell is broken and you find yourself dumbstruck. The horror and embarrassment of a misread moment floods your cheeks in crimson and you look down at the ground. She tell you that an ex of hers was trying to make it work. You understand. You remember a time when the roles were reversed. In the end, Zeus lowered himself to the stage to cast a bolt into the timorous flame kindled between you.
Years later, she reaches out again. You tell her that you got married and had some kids. She doesn’t respond. She never responds again. Time goes on, you settle into your lives and every day the moment feels less potent. A limb on the tree of your life withers and dies before ever bearing fruit. You muse at how many of these limbs there are. How many branches have been abandoned? Would knowing help, or would the loss of potential become so burdensome that you become a victim of your own choices?
I’d rather not find out…
