I avert my eyes. I could look but I don't. This is how you will know that I am relatively harmless. I could look and hold your gaze and the moment would be imbued with meaning, but I turn and make the coffee and there is time for you to do what you need to before I turn back. There are times when I have been impolite but this is not one of them. I am telling you now that I am mostly bark. I have bitten less times than I have fingers. And then, rarely to leave a mark.
I wait, hoping that you will remember the times when I could have pushed it oh so much further. I wait hoping that we will return to some kind of equilibrium. I wish that the warm rush that I have now associated with the thought of you might one day harden. I have leaped again, not for the last time, and I am in way out my depth.
Except you are there, a small stone suddenly, enough to rest on in this game of treading water, and our talking seems easy and full of warmth. I distrust it, of course, but I pause here in this brief conversation, and for a while I can breathe more easily.
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