A MOMENT OF TRUTH

You look deep into her eyes

She is saying something

But you aren’t listening

Looking, just looking

She stops talking

Lifts her eyebrows as if to ask

‘What is it?’

What is it indeed in those eyes

You say something unspoken

At least, you hope you said it

But she must have heard it

For she looks back

Into your eyes

Deeply, so deeply

You move closer to her

Without moving

Without realizing

She comes closer

Without coming closer

In that frozen moment

There is poetic motion

And your mind

Is perfectly blank

Knowing nothing

Feeling nothing

As she comes closer still

Until your lips touch hers

Without touching

You can feel her breath

Caress your mouth

You can feel her lips

Or at least, you think you can

And just a moment later

As you are about to move

One last time, closer

Close enough

You blink

And in that blink

You see someone

Someone else

Hear another voice

Call your name

You stop

And look away

Away from her

She moves backwards

Or at least, appears to

Without moving

The distances appear again

And broken words are spoken

Coarse humour is made

But inside

Inside you hurt

Knowing that a moment

Of purity, love and truth

Is lost

Forever

SHEEPISH

I smile as I catch myself looking after her, as she walks by oblivious to my attention.

Look deeply into her eyes, as she comes closer to me. As she passes by I can’t help but soak in her long lashes, and after that how her hair curls behind her ears. She crosses me completely, and I find myself lost in the bouncing curls that follow her bobbing head in rhythm with her crisp steps.

She stops at a table two tables away from me, asks the couple seated what they’d like to have this evening, notes it down with a small flourish on a small notepad, and starts walking back to the café, passing right by me again, and my eyes subtly doing the same thing all over again. I briefly try imagining what her handwriting would be like.

And I smile at myself, and I sigh. I had never thought that I’d come and sit at a small table outside an unknown café on the pavement of a street in a remote village of a Greek island day after day after day only to see a waitress pass me by, yet here I was. I had never thought that I’d want to talk to a woman who could only converse in one language, on that I didn’t speak, and yet here I was.

And I smile at myself and I sigh. I finish my coffee, and think of ordering another. But that would be silly – one simply does not have three cups before dinner. But as I notice her pass me by again, I have this burning urge to attract her attention, even if it meant doing something incredibly silly and childish. But I stop myself, and just in time. I suppose the best course of action was to call for the bill, and do just that. As she bends forward to place a sandwich and salad for the couple two tables away from me, I raise my arm to catch her eye.

She looks at me, and smiles as if to say ‘I’ll just be over’, and in that moment, caught between a sudden instinct to flash a James Bond smile and an equally strong impulse to avoid smiling a sheepish smile, I give her a smile laced with the most potent sheepishness.

It makes her giggle though. She smiles back at me once more, and this time, when I return in kind, it is a better kind. I pay the bill and left, which was less dramatic a process than I had imagined. Even so, I leave knowing I’ll be back tomorrow. And who knows, the sheepish one might just trump the James Bond.