He kissed me in the linguistics section of the local used book store. The irony was not lost on me, because the gentle tapping of his tongue on my lips was a language, itself, full of meaning and intention, meant to make me lose, at least, my train of thought, and at most, my self control, which had been tugging at the leash all day, and trying to abandon me for easier work.

I was reading about an analysis of the Baltic languages through the lens of artificial semantics models, when he surprised me with that gift. The wave of feeling was immediate and overwhelming.  The page went blank, and the room grew so hot I almost fainted.

The first tear started in my left eye, and it was the kind of tear you get when you see something precious rescued from a fire, or a  predator mothering what would normally be prey. A glimpse of something bigger and more beautiful. The power of kindness and the stab of hope.

The other tear came with sadness. The loss of the moment only just begun. The realization that what I know this to be
is not what I feel it to be,
and not what I want it to be.  Too soon to grieve, but too late to fix the course.

The wave hit me, and quickly passed, but those two feelings, side-by-side, still lingered. I stood there in my moment of drama, shaking inside, and probably outside, to anyone who was closely watching.

He was closely watching..

I think it took him by surprise, because it was partly done in play, seeing what he could do in mischief, and fun. But a little bit, he was testing his power, seeing what he could get away with, seeing how far he could push me.

“What’s wrong,” he said?

“Give me a moment. I’m gonna finish looking at this section.”  But 100 book spines all spoke the same thing. Communication is hard. Words are insufficient. Understanding is incomplete. We can try, but it still doesn’t make sense.

I’ve been here before: the closeness, the drawing back, the flirting, the wait, the kiss, the wondering, the surrender, the fear, the sex, then the silence. I am not ready to do it again, and it seems both hopeless and inevitable.

As we stepped from the darkness of the store into the brilliance of the day, I led him out  to a wall where we could sit and watch the traffic.

“You used powerful magic, in there,” I said, in words I hoped would understand.  “It has a big impact on me.”  I thought it would be a smile, but instead a look of concern crossed his face. I needed to ask, “Do you know what you’re doing?”

He stopped to ponder the question, which seemed to be a good sign. Then, he looked at me, the way he does. That way that makes me lose my words, and  fall deeper into his mischief.

“Yes,” he replied gently, but some part of me was not sure that he truly did, for his end game is different to mine. He is playing for sex, and I, foolishly, am falling in love.

As we started to walk again, two of the voices in my head spoke simultaneously.
“Yes, let him play.”
“Please. Don’t fuck me up.”
But neither one offered me words that would give me any real clarity. Meaning would have to wait.