Table For Two

• Tara Courtney, Grade 12
• Poetry
• 2019

you're hand stretched across the table
grasping for the small piece of flyaway hair
but stopping at my face. the tough hands against my skin cool to the touch, but burning fires within. realisation dawning on you like 6am, my skin was left bare and alone again.
fluorescent lights washing over the awkwardness that had pulled up a chair, found a seat, ordered a meal and decided it was going to join us. silence acting as a tablecloth between us, a barrier between words that cannot be spoken but lay out in front of us.
because to speak, to utter those simple yet most complicated words is to change everything. uttering those words invites the whole town to our table to discuss the inner workings of our brains, ignoring the chemistries of our hearts. the discussions that will spread through hoops, over hills and through the deepest valleys however they never include the truth. our truth. so the words stay in our hearts, with walls high around them. and we sit at that table with awkwardness, silence, desperation and hope. not the ideal dinner guests but definitely better then inviting loud mouthed wildfire of nothing but time wasting lies. the food never comes and no one else ever joins us. but we dare not leave. leaving means giving up on the love we can't have, but will always desperately cling too. the table for two reserved for as long as this infinity of fantasised love can last.