By hollywoodfox
Date: 2004 Aug 16
Comment on this Work
[[2004.08.16.02.12.21505]]

Make-Believe


"Are you staying here for lunch?" you'd ask me.
"I don't know, I hadn't thought much about it," I'd reply, planning on leaving, but hoping you'd want me to stay.
"Let me know," you'd say, smile, and walk away.

I'd instantly change my mind and decide to forgo a real meal and eat under the white forced ceiling with the zen raked sand. I'd bring a bagel and cottage cheese, or perhaps some leftover cold pizza from the night before.

You'd come sit down next to me and lean back in your chair as if you were unknowingly drawing my center of attention onto you. But I think you knew. A spoon in one hand, you had coffee-flavored ice cream in a bowl for your noon-time meal, your mannerisms insisting that someone, perhaps me, watch you.

Trying to be uncharacteristic of myself, I'd ask for a taste and you'd instantly hand over your sticky-handled utensil. I never minded. The fact that you were willing to share with a relative stranger made me warm even though I got a cold ice cream headache from swallowing too fast.

"So tell me about yourself," you'd casually slip in, as long as noone seemed to notice we smiled at each other like grinning fools.

"What do you want to know?" was my politically-correct-in-case-someone-was-listening response. Should I tell you that I once ate a habenero pepper by mistake and subsequently had tears dripping from my tongue? Or that I'd marry the first boy to hold my hand the right way?

Inadvertantly, I'd find that my fingers would be wandering towards yours, and I'd pull them before you noticed.  

I still wonder if they fit...