Falling

Come into this space, if you can tiptoe softly. Leave your shoes by the door, hold your breath. Come in, but have care.

This is a space for two people, a little nook hollowed out of the fading day. This is the part not shared with anyone else.

They are holding each other, but she is holding them a little apart, palms against his chest. There is ferocious energy in their stillness, two falling bodies held in mid-air.

We can't, she says.

I know, he says.

We can't, she says. It's not... safe. I could... There would...

There would be consequences, he says.

He holds her gaze.

He says, I would take those consequences gladly.

She breathes in.

He says it again. And again, as they start to fall into one another.

Drop the curtain, tiptoe back. Pretend you were never here.

Because this is the part you can never share. This is the joyful terror and the terrible joy that no-one can hear. There will be no poems written and no advice given, no romance and no glamour, for this is beyond and before the thought of either, just he and she and these unspeakable words that are said in different ways at every moment of every day somewhere in a space just like this.