In The Kitchen

In the kitchen, we are swaying, me on my toes and you in your socks. The dishes in the sink are stacked, dirty, and the spilled wine from dinner still stains the countertops crimson. We are too tired to find music, so we dance to the nightly news instead. You spin me through the weather forecast and dip me during the sports update. The home team has won, just like you said they would.

You’ve always been good at that, predicting the future. I wonder if you saw this coming; saw us in the kitchen, a tangle of gawky grace and anxious affection. We waltz from the fridge to the dishwasher, entranced and enchanted. I’ve never fancied myself a dancer, but as we swell and sway, painting whorls in the floor where our feet land, I think the world has never seen such elegance. It’s only until you stumble, your chin knocking into my forehead, that the illusion dissolves.

***

Meeting you was less a lucky twist of fate and more a product of inevitability. You sat down next to me in class and honestly, what else could have happened? I spent more time surreptitiously studying you than studying the material. You were quiet and sure, awkward and earnest. And it was your silence that ignited my infatuation. You became a caricature in the stories I would tell my friends. We made a game of inventing lives for you – in one you were a spy, another an aristocrat. Sometimes you were the son of an oil tycoon and other times you were a notorious drug dealer. You were fiction made flesh between the hours of nine to ten, three times a week. But never were you dull or boring, and never were you attainable.

That must be why, when you finally did speak to me, I was so taken aback. You had greeted me, said hello or maybe good morning, and I had simply stared. Surely this wasn’t the first time I was hearing your voice. It was not sly or aristocratic, nor was it pompous or conspiratorial. In all of me and my friends’ musings about who you could be, it had never occurred to us that you might be normal. But that’s what you sounded like. Normal. And it made me smile. The absurdness we had prescribed to you was simply that - absurd. You were just some boy in my biology class who happened to sit next to me on the first day. You weren’t even my friend.

***

Now, at the kitchen counter, I watch as you make smooth sweeps with a towel in your fist to catch the spilled wine. Like the dancing, there is a subtle grace to your movements. The veins in your hands flit and flutter and I’m mesmerized by the acrobatics taking place beneath your skin. I want to pluck the harp strings of your hands, hear the hum that will resonate from them.

I don’t touch you, though. I let you clean and cleanse our home. You do so patiently and without complaint, the way you approach so many things in your life. It’s something I’ve always admired about you - you are content to play the long game. I, on the other hand, tend to rush in headstrong and willful. I am chaos where you are calm, the antithesis of your steady demeanor. Every so often we remark on our differences, contemplating our uncanny coupling. Whether it be kismet or convenient class scheduling, there is a reason we exist in each other’s orbit. We know this unquestionably.

***

After you uttered those first few words to me in class, I was enamored. You were in all my favorite flights of fancy, and I strived to hear your voice again. We were slow to build a rapport, our early conversations mostly consisting of niceties and observations about the weather. I wanted to know about you, about your family. I wanted to ask about the scar that was shaped like Florida on your elbow. I wanted you to share your pencils and your playlists and your time. This seemed an insurmountable task when the best we could seem to do was sneak in comments between our professor’s breaths.

Then, you asked me. It was simple and sweet, your invitation to tea. As friends, you explained, somewhat as an afterthought or precaution. Like we could ever just be friends after the anxious hours I spent pining after you in the lecture hall. But we maintained the guise all through the first cup and then the second. But by the third you were telling a story and I was laughing and the ruse was up. How could the fullness I felt be a product of friendship? The swelling in my chest and the bursting of giddiness and the outpouring of affection? That was something else entirely. You must’ve felt it too, because by the time you were finished, you were flushed and glowing. We sat there smiling at each other. The tea went cold. We smiled regardless.

***

Now, the only light left on is the blinking clock on the microwave. In the blue dark, I can’t make out your features, but I trace your outline with my eyes and let my mind fill in the blanks. You seem ethereal, standing there beside the stove. I’m not a religious person, but in this moment, you are sanctity and divinity and all things holy. You might make a believer of me yet. How I ever thought anything about you was ever normal is astounding. The fanciful stories I made up before I knew you were only foolish in that they never did you any justice.

You are larger than life; you are life itself. In you I have found peace and beauty and power. You give all these things freely, without contingencies or conditions. Yours is a rare and sacred devotion, one which I cherish as we sway towards each other once more. I let you stamp a kiss to my forehead, my left cheek, my chin. I let you twirl me one last time before we put the house and ourselves to bed. The dishes in the sink never got cleaned; they remain stacked, dirty. We don’t mind, we will do this again tomorrow.