Be patient.

Cuddle your kids.

Throw the undersized ones back in.

Cool your jets.

Pair up.

Choose.

Everywhere he turned there was another, more lovely than the last. Their skin, their hair, their voices melted together like warm syrup on his tongue. He head spun.

“Go! Leave me be! I need time to consider”.

And suddenly they were gone. He was alone, his hair grey, the taste of old age dry as dust on his lips.

Aim high.

Everything suddenly seemed way too vivid. The colour of the roses, their rising perfume, the sound of her gate where he leaned, frozen.

Poor, lonely, handsome Edgar Thompson couldn’t take one step toward her front door, but neither could he step back to the sidewalk. All he could do was stay where he was…gawping at Alice’s house like it had landed from the moon.

“Are you just going to stand there, or come in for some iced tea?” She was there in front of him as perfect as this day and everything was wonderful,  just wonderful.

Look after yourself.

“Whadya gonna do?” he shrugged, “Sit at home lonely? Naah”.

Romeo was an optimist. Getting outta da house…goin’ for a workout and a steam bath…maybe even a manicure was his routine. It took a lotta work to look this good.

“Romeo by name and Romeo by nature”, he told he ladies.

Breathe.

She wasn’t sure whether the heat from the fire was making her eyes sting, or if she was going to cry.

He loved to build a fire, she thought, he built this one… suddenly she was sobbing. The thought of the future without him was too hard to get her mind around. How could she live without him? Was there any point? Who else understood her, loved her, knew her history? No one else smelled like him, and no one else made her feel safe.

She would have to grow skin again. Thick skin.

She remembered to breathe in, breathe out and then breathe again. Back to the beginning.

 

Step outside.