Rise and Fall

We sat next to each other, our shoulders touching, it was intimate but somehow distant at the same time. It was not the ‘first time’ feeling, that electricity, those nerves, but it was exhilarating in its own way. Neither of us moved, nobody pulled away or became uncomfortable, we just sat there enjoying the bodies connected.

Then, after a while, I began to feel the rise and fall of her chest, up and down, relaxed, calm, but excited. I listened with my shoulder and my body followed, my breathing matching hers. I focused on the tempo of her breath and my body relaxed into hers. My heart smiled.

Laughter

Her laugh, that’s what did it, she would start talking in a kind of mumble, struggling to make her point, then punctuate the words with laughter making her sentence incomprehensible. The laughter would start light but deepen and as it did, she became more and more desperate to make her point. Unfortunately more often than not she failed, hamstrung by her own happiness. After a moment or so her laughter would be so deep that no air could pass into her body, she would end up silencing herself. But it was sooo contagious, all I ever wanted to do was to hear that silence.