One Day in December

by Josie Silver

“I wanted to kiss you back there in the pub, Laurie, and I want to kiss you even more right now. You’re one of the loveliest people I’ve ever met in my whole life.” He looks away, down the length of the deserted street and then back at me again. “You’re beautiful and kind, and you make me laugh, and when you look at me like that with your summer hedgerow eyes…only a fucking saint wouldn’t kiss you.”

“But I also said that sometimes, rarely, people can come back into your life. And if that happens, you should keep those people close to you forever.”

You tread lightly through life, but you leave deep footprints that are hard for other people to fill.”

And then he looks down at me, and his eyes say all the things he cannot. His gaze holds mine as we dance slowly, and I silently tell him that I’ll always carry him in my heart, and he silently tells me that in another place, another time, we’d have been pretty damn close to perfect.