one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling
one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
There is a part of her, large and brutal and bruising, that had expected him to push back on her question. To either say nothing or withdraw or even walk away because she wishes she could walk away from her self. She wishes that she could be anywhere but where she is. She wishes that she could love with less need; she wishes that she could be calm and quiet and independent, her own ecosystem of want.
But he does nothing that she expects.
Instead, he is quiet and thoughtful and her heart leaps painfully in her throat like it is some sign that he may care about her the way that she cares about him. That his feelings have the same depth as her own and he too feels the way they can thrash around like angry oceans in your chest.
Does he bear the same scars as her?
Does it bite at the back of his throat too?
She presses her lips together to keep the questions from tumbling out and continues to walk the path of Loess as it curves against Hyaline. “I don’t know,” she finally says when she trusts that her voice will not tremble and that she will not shake with all the things she chokes back. “I have to think that there’s some reason for it,” this is said quietly and she doesn’t dare look at him when she says it.
“I have to think that there’s a reason I ran into you that day.”
She doesn’t tell him that she thinks she knows the reason. That she knows the rhyme behind it all. That the curve of his jaw is a map home to her now. That she dreams to the tempo of his heartbeat. She doesn’t tell him that he saved her life that day or that he saved all the days after it too. She just swallows and looks ahead, knowing that they will reach the forest soon and wishing it wasn’t in the middle of night.
“Do you think there’s a reason?”