micro memoir | The In-between Terrain

“I don’t want people to know,” He says. We are looking at the very thing we are in: our blossom of love; the mud puddle of excitement, confusion, fear; the night friendship turns to romance by way of physical touch — first a hand on the thigh, then a tilt of the head, later a grip behind the neck.

I ask him why, curious and kind.

“I don’t think I’m ready.”

That’s okay, I tell him. My fingers caress his chest.

The next morning, I look in the mirror and find a hickey on my neck.

Then how exactly do you want me to explain this to people, this most obvious symbol of the very thing we are in?

Y is a contradiction. So am I. We each exist in the fine space between our inner opposites. Together, we are on a trek, exploring the terrain on which we coexist, feeling out the fine space between platonic and romantic states.