the evening hanging like a dream

The Clientele: Saturday

Nothing inspires me to learn language like knowing someone I want to speak to. He is 6'2" (a whole foot taller than me) and beautiful. I don't know much besides this when I, in a tempest of uncharacteristic daring, give him my phone number in the student bar on a Friday afternoon. He calls on Saturday, the next Thursday we go out. We walk all over the little town, which is covered in lilacs now, and swing on the swings in a park. We hold hands when it gets dark. We sit at my kitchen table and have wine and chocolate. He kisses me. I kiss him. He asks if I want to have lunch the next day. I do. We do.

The surprise of touching a stranger's skin, so suddenly he is not a stranger but a fragile other and deserves my care. Something lit up in me, a slender green flame like a blade or a leaf.

And when I saw your eyes
What could I do, what could I say, my love?
Your kisses, they will hide away the stars.