To lose a story...

I like your chair to be next to mine, not shoulder-to-shoulder or even conjoined armrests, but an easy sideways glance away. Because whenever I look up between pages, expecting to find the next sentence begin on your lips, you mute them in a tight-lipped smile.

Should I lose restraint enough to burst into word, you will not knit your eyebrows together in reply or even work up an answering grumble in that knot of a throat You will smile at me as a person who says out “138 plus 23” aloud and lurches along ten by ten as over the wrong answer ought to be smiled at.

Bookmarks were invented for people who never intend to see the last page, the one left blank on purpose after the ending, just to remind you that the best stories begin at the end of good ones.
Why do I need bookmarks, when the skin between thumb of forefinger is taut with every turned page, remembers exactly how thick a wall I have built around my story and myself?

Hair falls in spirals around me as my other hand searches out traitors among them, and black threaded clumps dance together like dying spiders in concert. The night screams for coffee before crying itself to sleep, with every yawn eyes grow warmer and the sharp clean lines of black grow softer and softer.

Forgetfully sometimes, you walk away in search of that bottomless glass of water, in wait of that phantom phone call that never arrives but keeps you leaning over the balcony railings as if the first note of your ringtone might make you fall over. You walk away because of that voice, which like a dust-jewelled shaft of sun asks you to draw curtains around you and watch in a silence that thwarts my last chance, swallows the words that might have reached you had the doorcrack been wider.

You abandon the seat to suffer my fretful gaze empty and my book lies face down, spine arched achingly, print averting its unread face away from me and hugging its knees shut till you return.

And if you don’t, you will have stolen away a story which trailed you trustingly like a wide-eyed child waiting to be let into a secret.