I'm listening to: Chicago - If You Leave Me Now

It had been occupying my thoughts for quite some time, and unbearably so; for its constant presence stifled that of other important considerations and I was bound, hand and foot, to this nagging obsession. Like a dangerous caged animal, I didn't want to keep it, but I couldn't release it either. So, I waited.

I was anticipating a symbolic interlinking of fates or some sort of serendipitious occurance, to signal the blossoming of opportunity and the Perfect Moment. It gradually became clear that I was perhaps waiting in vain, and I was also running short of time.

I mustered a little courage and a lot of blind optimism, and finally told you everything. The mild surprise that registered on your countenance was, ironically, not unexpected. Everything was going according to a plan that hadn't even been conceived.

Yet, there was something else in your expression. We both knew it was something worth pursuing. Was it a slip on your part or a gesture intended simply to let me know it even existed? The survival of an entire world, though not this one, hung in the balance as those few seconds of infinity ticked by. Again, we don't have much time.

Possibilities were starkly apparent and they electrified the air as if with static energy. Like a flash of lightning, their presence was brief but startlingly unmistakable. We could've fixed everything there and then. We could've put together the last pieces of the puzzle. Couldn't we?

They weren't yet ripe for the picking, I decided. Maybe they fall of their own accord. Who knows? Do you know? An unspoken consensus engendered as we both continued walking amidst a comfortable silence. Its ghost lingered still, and of that fact we were acutely aware.

I see our reflections on the surface of a pond that is still and, without meaning to, smile.