sorry

He falls in love in a second.

Love at first sight. The powerful kind of instant attraction that belongs in fairytales or golden wedding anniversaries or television sit coms.

"I have an attraction." he tells me, and I don't want to know anything about it. I want to leave and walk back to my own, delicately balanced life. I have the feeling that he wants to hold me as he topples down that abyss where the real world is just a small point of light at the end of a great echo.

I know what is down there, the place he is falling to. If we were in the ocean I would kick away, burying my head in the silence of water and I would leave him there to drown.

"I don't know," he has locked his fingers in the fabric of my coat. I would not be able to walk away without a struggle. I see the abyss stretching out as dark and clear as his stare. "It happened so suddenly just then, your friend, your beautiful friend. I am attracted to your friend."

Love falls like a hammer in the place of echoes that he is calling from. Love at first sight. Love with teeth and claws to rip that thin veneer of sanity from his fragile bones.

I want to tell him that I have been there too, that I hold myself back now. That I fall in love five times a day and shrug and let it go. I want to tell him that he just wants to be touched by someone, anyone, a stranger, but there is that awful intensity in his stare.

I step away from him, feeling his fingers peeling off my coat one by one until I have put a save distance between us.

"Ok then, see you."

And later in the evening we walk past the place where he is still standing nailed to the spot by the pain of instant love.