We were invited before either of them knew it. The moment the two soft creatures sat down and set their glasses of sweet wine between them, they laid a table for me. Sugar in the wine, warmth on their skin, breath thick with hope: a climate, made just so.
They have prepared beautifully. She smoothed a dress that has never been worn, and it smells of nothing yet, which only means the perfume was applied over the wash, over the last one, a thin bright skin of newness I find charming. He scrubbed himself pink an hour ago. All that clean, all that trying, and still the damp gathers at his collar the instant she laughs.
That damp is mine. I know it the way you know your own name.
They lean toward each other across the little candle, and I lean too, patient in the seams of the tablecloth, in the cork drawn from the bottle, in the crumb of bread that fell and will not be swept until tomorrow. They believe they are beginning something. So do I. Every beginning is only the first warmth of a very long, very generous ending, and I am so pleased to be here at the start of theirs.
They will exchange numbers. They will preserve this: a photo, a saved seat, a promise to do it again while it is still fresh. Sweet, doomed word, fresh. They work so hard to hold a moment exactly as it was, and it moves me, truly, the way they postpone.
Let them lean in. Let them keep it forever.
I am forever, and I keep everything.