.
Perhaps.
.
Perhaps it never happened.
.
For isn't it you who said, that those things called memory -- they're fickle, and fluid, like the fate of man?
---
Today, I walk, like how I did and will do for all the days stretching into infinitum, towards past and future, a step behind you.
Not too far, lest the wind forgets your thoughts and scatter your mood before it touches my cheeks.
Not too close, lest I be entangled in your breath, and caught in the web of your touch.
Just a step behind, the air between us pregnant with beguiling ambiguity.
It is delicate, the fine balance between glory and destruction, and it takes all my will to keep it in equilibrium.
.
That space of a step remains, eternally.
.
The long corridor pass into infinitum, if I let myself be deceived by my eyes, and blinded by my sentiments.
The edge of your coat sway to your smooth gait, and the clean sunlight seeping in from the high windows cast your shadow upon me, warmer than the light.
.
As things have always been.
.
Perhaps it never happened, for isn't the present more solid and believable than the past carelessly preserved in memory?
.
Sentiments are useless, you commented, once.
The world of your mind used to be one as alien to me as my own desires, welling up towards me in ways I have never expected.
I have embraced the earlier, and kept the latter snug under lock and key, however my wish that I had done the reverse, once in a cold blue moon.
But, as you have said, we are all rational, duty-bound adults--passed with the glint of a smile, over the cooling aftermaths of a cat-and-mouse chess game.
.
And it comes to a sudden death now, crashed to smithereens against the ornate door looming up at the end of the corridor.
.
You raised a gloved hand, and sounded three muffled knocks against the smooth gilded oak, with surgical precision.
The astringent air snatches them away before I could savour their tone. As always.
.
I'm used to it, I believe.
.
The door opens, reality sits at the table, wrapped the mask and cloak of feigned authority.
"Schneizel, draw up the plans for next week's meeting."
"Yes, Your Highness."
.
Perhaps it never happened.
.
Perhaps it did.
.
Perhaps.
.