I was visiting Rich after work yesterday, so I found myself on a half-hour bus ride back into suburbia. The bus was full of suit-wearing cubicle-ites, but unlike myself, they shut their eyes and slept most of the way. I plugged in my iPod earphones and spotted rabbits, groundhogs and cats in the passing scenery like a real life Where’s Waldo. I was really feeling the music yesterday, and enjoyed being taken in by the melodies and lyrics of slow songs.
I didn’t time how long it took to get there, because it didn’t really matter. Once I was there, we enjoyed lying down, breathing slow and looking at each other. For once, it was easy for me to lie my head down and just study him. The placement of his freckles, the angles of temples, the three different flecks of colour in his irises. I didn’t have to say anything. We were so glad to have some time together, we didn’t need to ruin it with schedule planning, funny things that happened that day or asking what movies are coming out. It was a rare moment of reading each other. It felt like we were two wispy breaths being connected by threads of each other, all the while flowing in a larger inhale and exhale. Romantic and poetic? Yes. But it was exactly what we needed. With our mismatched schedules, our rendezvous often require a lot of planning and near-precise timing, so when we can forget about the ticking clock, even if just for a moment, we relish in it and hang on to it as long as we can.
I’ll be away this weekend and then off to a cottage, so after tomorrow night, it will be another four and a half days before we can see each other again. I know we’ll both think about getting closer to that time almost as soon as we open our eyes each morning.