We met in a second-hand bookstore on a Sunday when rain kept sensible people indoors. I was reaching for a worn copy of Neruda when his hand got there first. Instead of apologizing, he simply held it out to me, fingers brushing mine in the transfer.\u201cLove poems?\u201d he asked.
\u201cOnly the ones that leave bruises,\u201d I replied.He smiled like I\u2019d passed a test I didn\u2019t know I was taking.We wandered separately for a while, pretending interest in different shelves, but always within peripheral vision. Every so often our eyes would meet across the aisles and hold just long enough to acknowledge the game. When I moved to poetry, he appeared at the end of the stack holding a volume of Ana\u00efs Nin. He didn\u2019t say anything; he simply opened it to a dog-eared page and tilted it so I could read the underlined sentence: \u201cWe don\u2019t see things as they are, we see them as we are.\u201dI took the book from him, let my thumb rest exactly where his had been, and underlined the next line with my nail: \u201cI want to be undone by someone.\u201dThe shop owner was dozing behind the counter. Rain drummed steadily on the tin awning outside. We had the poetry section practically to ourselves.He leaned against the shelf opposite me, arms folded, watching as I flipped pages. I stopped at a poem that began, \u201cI have been a thousand different women in the dark\u2026\u201d and read it aloud, barely above a whisper. When I reached the last line, I closed the book and pressed it to my chest like a secret I wasn\u2019t ready to release.He stepped closer\u2014not crowding, just near enough that I could see the faint freckles across the bridge of his nose I hadn\u2019t noticed before. \u201cThere\u2019s a caf\u00e9 two doors down,\u201d he said. \u201cThey serve coffee in mismatched cups and never rush anyone.\u201dI understood it wasn\u2019t about coffee.We spent three hours in that caf\u00e9, reading passages to each other under the table so no one else could hear, tracing footnotes with fingertips that occasionally wandered to wrists, to the inside of elbows, to the soft skin just beneath the jaw\u2014never lingering, always retreating, like tides testing the shore.When we finally stood to leave, the rain had stopped. The sidewalks glistened. Neither of us suggested exchanging numbers. Some conversations are perfect because they end before they have to become ordinary.He walked me to my corner. At the curb he reached out and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear with the same care someone might use turning down a page they intend to return to.\u201cSame time next Sunday?\u201d he asked.
\u201cBring something dangerous,\u201d I said.He smiled, and I felt it in places smiles aren\u2019t supposed to reach.Some stories are written between the lines, in the white space where the real heat lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We met in a second-hand bookstore on a Sunday when rain kept sensible people indoors. I was reaching for a worn copy of Neruda when his hand got there first. Instead of apologizing, he simply held it out to me, fingers brushing mine in the transfer.\u201cLove poems?\u201d he asked.\u201cOnly the ones that leave bruises,\u201d I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/feverishhquiet.tanoshii.fun\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/feverishhquiet.tanoshii.fun\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/feverishhquiet.tanoshii.fun\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feverishhquiet.tanoshii.fun\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feverishhquiet.tanoshii.fun\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/feverishhquiet.tanoshii.fun\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18,"href":"https:\/\/feverishhquiet.tanoshii.fun\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/18"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feverishhquiet.tanoshii.fun\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/feverishhquiet.tanoshii.fun\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feverishhquiet.tanoshii.fun\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feverishhquiet.tanoshii.fun\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}