love life

He strokes your hand. Light little brushes during the movie. The two of you are joking about having to run down the hallway in the artsy movie theatre downtown to get to the bathroom. The medium size of diet coke that is most likely the cause of your late night writing, was the size of a small bathtub. You can’t drink caffeine very often anymore because of the medication for your depression, it’s got a little bit of a kick to it. An almost twenty-seven year old who drinks decaf coffee, you hang your head and pretend like you’re not affected by the rationale.

Before the movie started you were talking about the bathtub as a perfectly good topic to wax indignant. He pulled at the little wisps of hair by your ear. He likes to put his finger below your nose and to brush up over the septum to the bridge. He has such long elegant fingers. Well manicured. You love snuggling your face into the crook of his neck, breathing deeply that smell of someone you’re comfortable with. Feeling his soft hair tickle your lips.

There is that brief moment of movie-drunkenness; that movie euphoria when people get stuck in the empathy and the story and the action for a while after the movie ends. Wandering out of the small theatre with a stupid smile on your face, like you used to wear stoned. In the filing out, up the aisle and funneled out the door, you reached for his jacket, so as to not be separated.

Twenty years ago, three feet shorter, in a sea of pant legs you reached for you’re your father’s khakis, so as to not be separated. You held on until reaching the door, when the stranger looked down at you and asked if you needed help. Saucers staring at an hundred and forty degree angle, frightened. A deep inhale and the following “lost” yell brought your dad to the man with the matching khakis.

Remembering this as you reach for Phillips corduroy jacket brought a smile to your face. Wanting to remember it for the purpose of writing it down, you shuffled around in the mary- poppin's faux leather bag for a pen. You wrote on your hand, “pants 5 movie theatre.” He pulls your hand to him so he can decipher your scribbled notes. He guesses all the way out of the theatre what it means to you. It was a fun game.