Conversations #1

Sitting on the edge of the bed, X was first to speak.

She said that the problem with the world today was the fact that everyone was going around searching for love, but never really knowing what it really was. “We find ourselves lying in bed with someone we’ll never really know, thinking, ‘Well, it’s not love, but at least it’s something.’”

M nodded. Something, he figured, was always better than nothing.

X argued that if life were simpler, love would be possible between complete strangers. After all, didn’t people have the natural tendency to reach out to one another? “Since when did we stop being people? Since when did we ever understand love?”

M did not answer. He really didn’t know.

She pressed on: “Isn’t it funny? This thin line between liking someone and then loving them? When does like become love, and when does love become something more? What is that moment where everything suddenly changes?”

M shrugged. He replied: “Something as gentle as a feather with the force of an atomic bomb.”

She sighed.

So he waited.

She told him that she saw people as lines, and that most of the time, these lines ran parallel, never touching, never knowing that the other existed. Yet, sometimes they do cross, and people seem to take these moments for granted. Because once two lines cross, they are destined to continue further and further away from each other.

“Like passing ships in the night,” said M who, unlike X, had read Longfellow before.

“You see someone you think you’d love forever, only to realize that you are parallel lines and you can’t help but think to yourself, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if our lines met, and never left?’ I don’t want to be a passing ship any longer.”

M nodded. He noticed that the two of them were sitting ever so closely. The one moment they shared — that they could call their very own — existed in the absence of space between them, and it was everything even if it meant nothing.

So he kissed her, slowly and deeply to keep the sun from rising.

“Will I see you again?” he asked.

She kissed him back, but the space between them had already begun to grow. “Maybe.”