In that moment

Harsha Agrawal 

It was a moment. A moment that would shatter the reserve of strength and self-control that had allowed us to pretend that we were just friends for years.

It all happened so fast that we didn’t have the time to get our bearings in place. We raced shots after shots of tequila that evening.

Did we want to lose all sense of inhibition and morality that had kept us at a safe, platonic distance for all these years? Sometimes I wonder if that is all the purpose that ethanol serves- to help almost lovers unleash the madness they have been holding within for an eternity.

As your face inched closer to mine that night, I could smell on your breath a little tequila and a lot of desire. When you traced a loose strand of my hair with your tempting finger, I felt a million sparks explode inside of me. With each kiss you planted on my neck, I felt a knot in my soul come loose.

Your hands ran along my hair and then my bare hands like they were memorizing parts of me before our touch dissipated with the heat of the first rays of the sun.

And yet when we arrived at the moment, where I could taste the weight of the many lifetimes I have loved you for on your beautiful lips… We hesitated. With just the distance of the lightest feather separating us, we knew a step ahead would be like a recovering addict taking just one sip of that damning alcohol.

A steep spiral towards the unknown where it’s just you and me and the endless night sky. An adventurous entanglement that wouldn’t allow us to break free and return to the lulling humdrum of our uneventful familial lives. A romance so epic that all sense of reality and all rules of morality become an indecipherable blur.

So we did what we always do. We chose to break no hearts but ours. We chose to betray no one but each other. We took a step back and returned to the familiarity of being almost lovers.

Just that now the endless sky and I, lay awake each night with the magical memory of your mouth on my neck. And the million sparks that had never exploded before you and now… They never will.


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