Weakness

I’m sitting in front of him not wanting to touch him because once I touch him there’s no way I can stop and there’s no way I can go back to being just friends with him and I sit here staring at him wanting to roll my eyes back in my head in an exaggerated way so he really notices that I’m annoyed with him and annoyed with the way he only talks in clichés as if he can’t even consider traversing back to reality for just one minute so we can figure out what this all means to us as friends or as lovers or as two people engaging in a forbidden tryst in the middle of the night in a tiny over air-conditioned room sitting on the unmade bed which is the only piece of furniture that two people can fit on comfortably enough to talk about serious things such as whether or not he can forget about all of the other women in his life enough to have me as his own and his answer is just another damned cliché of “lord knows I can’t change” from that god-awful Lynrd Skynrd Free Bird Song that makes me cringe in disgust every time I hear it except when it’s coming from his mouth because when it comes from his mouth I can’t even focus on the fact that he’s quoting song lyrics instead of taking me seriously but instead I can only stare at the oh shape his lips make and the way his tongue pushes outwards with each syllable and the way his eyes are wide and fawning and I know they are deceiving and lying 100% of the time but the proximity of his hand to mine and his head to mine and his legs to mine, clouds my rationality and reasoning skills and causes a temporary breakdown in my guard and removes the metaphorical safety from my gun and now I realize that he’s got me thinking in clichés too and I still can’t get mad because he’s about to kiss me and I can feel the warmth of his hand as it is about to close in on top of mine and I can smell the dankness of coffee on his breath and I can feel the firmness of his stomach nearing mine and I can no longer remain cold and closed and I know I am going to touch him.

(Note to reader from the author:  this story is best read out loud)

Tovah is a rather tall girl from Minneapolis. She is majoring in English and minoring in Creative Writing and is considering the perks of being jobless after graduation. She is currently studying in Barcelona.