I rounded the sidewalked corner.

With each step, the soles of my boots tapped.  Not stomped.  I wasn't in the mood to stomp this morning.  No one was.  The guitar shop and the abandoned clothing shop were on the left.  A transclucent dust blanket hugged the glass.  Dust, or vapor was it?  I couldn't tell.

It was 6:00 in the AM.  Coffee-time morning.  The air was chilled enough to steal all the feeling in my fingers.  I couldn't even feel my cup despite the steam rising and waving into my face as if it was attempting to awaken me, but without prevail.

 

The town was me, and I was the town.  Awake, but barely.  There were no cars, save the occasional passerby gliding past as if they hadn't anywhere else to be or things to do.  The sky a bright gray ceiling--but not bright enough to release the sun in its entirety just yet.

 

Everything cast their long shadows on the ground.  There was a town of dark shapes on the sidewalks and glittering roads.

 

           There wasn't a breeze.

 

My eyes were heavy so I closed them.  I knew where I was going, didn't need to think.  My boots did all the thinking for me.

          Breathe

   Breathe

         

Pause.

 

Was I sleepy enough to hallucinate at this hour of the day?

 

No.  Not just yet.

 

There was a whiff of coffee.  But it wasn't my coffee.

         Why did I stop walking?

I had stepped out from under the eaves, under the first rays of the sun.  Its seams found their way upon my face.  I squinted ever so slightly.

 

I was right.   It was coffee.     And it definitely wasn't mine.

 

My eyes fluttered open, taking in the stranger before me.  A tall boy was on the sidewalk, pressing himself forward, his fitted jeans shifting with each step.  He moved much like I did.  He had the same lace-up boots.  We were almost like twins in mannerism.  Much the same, I observed as the distance between us slipped to a thread.

 

I had never seen this boy before in my life, but it was the oddest thing--a part of me felt as if I was about to reunite with some significant figure of my past.

 

I couldn't for the life of me explain.

 

He looked up at me and time froze for a minute.  A foot to the left, a foot before me.  His eyes were fathomless, like lively island oceans.  Eyes like that didn't belong in this town.  They didn't suit.  They were the close to first thing that I noticed, locking me in like a hypnotist but without effort at all.

 

The sleepy town stood still, even stiller that it had been.

 

My mind left my body.

 

There was something about this stranger standing here.  A connection.  A reason why we were on the sidewalk, in our own patch of sun, piercing each other with deep, unidentified thought through our pairs of windows the world knows as eyes.  There must have been a reason we both had our coffee that day, we both tapped our boots and dragged ourselves down the street.  And we both hadn't seen each other, ever, yet there was this itching urge within our auras that told us

  to stop.

     And stare.

           And to move closer.

                      And closer.

 

                               No distance.

 

And to slip our fingers around each other's entities and let our lips say the hellos we skipped uttering ourselves.

 

There must have been a reason his abysmal eyes disappeared for a moment as his lids closed

    and as did mine.

 

I kenw then we were crazy.  Crazy for kissing a stranger.  Crazy for linking these nerve endings without boundaries between them, save for thin skins.  

Crazy to electrocute ourselves into a ceased heartbeats for just a second, just a fraction of the second,

to awaken

    and be alive.

 

That's what it felt like.

 

But I also knew there were hints.

 

Hints that yelled and echoed and clawed at us from the inside with such sonority.

 

It was as if this was meant to happen to awaken such a sleepy town.

 

Before my lungs took in even the next breath, we were heading down the sidewalk once more.

 

In opposite directions

  with the same drag

and the same coffee

and the same boots

and the same walk.

 

Not looking back.

 

Not seperating ourselves from what was this town.

 

 

And that was the last hint we saw of each other.

             The last hint of the morning in that sleepy town.