Autumn In New York
He looks at me, brown eyes confused, glittering in the autumn light like freshly made chocolate candies settling and cooling off on a glass window pane somewhere downtown in a store. I can't help but smile. He's an innocent man -- an old, cheery man, yet completely innocent.
I pull back before he does, watching as he lifted his hand to his lips and touched it lightly. He gazes at me, bewildered, stunned, and blushing. I giggle, my silk rose lips tightly drawn out into a Cheshire Cat grin. He's so innocent.
"Wh-what was that for?"
I wink. "A risk."
His eyebrows raise. "A... a risk?"
"Like I said, everything is a risk, and it's all worth it." I pause, lightly touching his other hand with the tips of my fingers. "Like you are."
"Dawn, I'm married," he breathes.
I nod. "I know."
"And you still kissed me?"
"It was a risk I had to take."
Walking forward down the pathway colored with red and brown and yellow and green, I can hear him following me, feeling his hand try and clutch my moving, swaying arm next to me, yet he fails, unable to touch me.
I think he retracted his hand on purpose, unsure what would happened if he touched me again. He possibly thought "a pretty girl kissed some old fat man, and dammit, I wanna know why." Either that, or "I just want to kiss her again."
A kiss can mean many things. A promise of love and devotion, a secret sign of passion for one another, a gentle message of dedication and absolute vulnerability.
I kissed Mick because he is a friend, a kind soul, a man I wished I could've loved to have married, had we met years ago. He's a man I lost to another, a woman I never knew, a man that could've given me the world.
I kissed him to feel the love I could've had, but didn't receive.
And it was pretty damn good.
My body swings around and Mick grabs me by both of my arms, pulling me close up to his chest and holding me still. This look in his brown eyes pleas with me to stay, to not thrash uncontrollably, to not walk down the path alone without him.
I smile. "What is it?"
There's this emotion on his face etched into the features of his skin, his mustache, his beard and lips and breath. He's neither confused nor certain, wise yet naive, innocent but tainted. He knows what it is to love. He has a wife at home.
Yet, as he holds me in his arms, I can't help but feel that aura of sheer purity, chastity, like he was never touched by the hand of Love beforehand, like the beautiful girl from Jersey in his arms was the one he loved, his long-lost soulmate, and they were destined to meet and fall in love and have a happily-ever-after like all fairy-tales and true lovers do.
It's too good to be true.
Then, he kisses me.
His lips against mine. Silk to satin. Passion to passion. Love to love. A promise.
It's real. I know it's perfect, right, true. It's the hole in my heart that I've been aching to fill and fix, and here he comes, right on cue, my Prince Charming, riding over on a beautiful steed and saving me.
We pull apart, and stare into each other's eyes.
"What..." He can't breathe, but he finds his voice. "What now?"
I can only smile, like any good girl does. "Well, wanna walk around the park some more?"
He laughs, and it mends the shards of my broken heart. "Sure," he whispers, and locks his hand around my own.
And as we step on leaves and splash in puddles and talk and laugh and fall into each others arms, we ignore the words of the world and lose ourselves in the beauty of the autumn.
I was right.
It is a beautiful day.