The Last Day

"Did you know I was dreaming when you first walked up to me and said 'hi'?"

The lake spread out in front of them indefinitely; an unfathomable sheet of gray-blue. A shrill wind blew and cold water lapped gently at their feet. The sun revealed himself sporadically, as if he and the clouds wanted to play hide and seek with the earth.

"Yes, you hardly looked at me that evening. The party was great, but I could feel you were not there. You were most definitely elsewhere."

"You never asked me where I was; or did you? I can never remember such things" She shook her head a little.

He shifted slightly, straightening his legs, leaned back on his elbows and looked at her profile set against the curving city. The silhouette of a straight nose. Hair falling obliviously over thin shoulders. A loose white blouse quivering over indigo-blue jeans.

"I didn't ask you then. I let you be. That seemed the best thing to do."

"You always let me be." She shrugged.

They sat on the hard concrete steps for a long time. Looking at boats sailing out in the water.

***

"Baffling for a writer not to talk."

Carefully studying him, she uttered the words slowly. Swans swam about, ducks shepherded their young and water lapped unceasingly on the sloping concrete.

"Words are a window to others,right? or better yet, a bridge to different worlds. Worlds that live and die each day in other people.People sometimes live an eternity in a day, you know."

"You are the one who talks like a poet."

"You are the one who draws poets" she smiled, looking towards the blurring lines of lake and sky. "...and draws them out too."

***

"You know what I like most about you?"

He spoke up while throwing remains of his sandwich to several swans and ducks meandering around the steps where they sat.

"Its your incessant curiosity and fear. How the two can survive so pointedly with each other fascinates me."

Dusk played a fugue of colors in the boundless sky. The sun sinking as a mattress of twinkling stars took over the city.

"I am a specimen worth writing about, you mean?" Sitting two steps further down, she was almost surrounded by the swans. They were making so much noise, eager for a good catch, that it was difficult to hear her voice above the din.

He sat up straight, gazing meticulously at her arm stretching out to feed and caress the majestic white creatures. Her spine straightened and the hair on the nape of her neck stood alert at the intensity of his gaze. "Careful. They'll bite if you fret."

She smiled. "Sometimes you make me feel that you care."

Her voice, floating on the breeze, combed slowly through his fingers.

"For me. Not just because you find me fascinating from a distance, but because you actually feel something. Here." She brought her hand to her heart.

"You kid yourself too much." Still meticulously observing the movements of her hands.

A while later he got up and shooed the swarm of white away from her.

"Its almost time for my flight. Lets go."