July 26 — The best disinfectant / Edinburgh

Andrew Collins
Aug 22, 2017 · 2 min read

I.

I tapped her on the shoulder and she stirred from sleep.

“The sun is rising!” I whispered. The clean gold shafts of light had stirred me a moment earlier. They pierced the glass airport terminal with increasing intensity.

She got up and rested her chin on the back of the seat to watch. She sat there just long enough to catch the full orb break above the eastern hills of Madrid — just long enough to be polite, in my cynical estimation. Then she curled up on the floor again.

“That’s nice.”

Wordlessly I continued watching the sunrise. In the long brightness I could see dust and crumbs on the marble floor around the feet of the chairs where the cleaners had missed. The most bright and pure sunlight does that. It exposed the grit and grime we otherwise fail to see.

II.

“What do you want to do?”

We were on the bus to the center of Edinburgh, with three hours of adventure to our credit. The layover had been longer than I expected. She was obviously happy that we had decided to go into town.

I thought about the question for a moment. The sky was overcast and drizzly. We passed an old neighborhood and I saw a stone bridge.

“What if I said I want to make out with you on a stone bridge in the rain?”

She smiled the way she always did when we were in love and tracking with each other.

“I think we want to do the same thing,” she said.

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Andrew Collins

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Lumberjack by day. Editor of Grassroots Pulse on the side. Writer and Jesus-follower at all times. If things were simple, word would have gotten around.