kissing cousins
They sit on opposite sides of the poetry carousel in the library, waging a silent war over who gets the volume of sonnets.
The battle is in deadly earnest – a hand, pale, ink-splattered, be-ringed fingers slowly creeping along the metal edges of the cart as the other perches just beyond the crest of books, lithe and spare and dark - some ancient spiderlike predator, seeking its prey by scent alone.
There is a feigned nonchalance in the one-two-one-two beat of their glances, sometimes checking the progress of the other hand, sometimes landing on the other face or perusing the title of the book covering it. Sometimes noting the blue eyes – how unusually familiar, the blue eyes.
Always the hands, waiting to dart forth.
Always the eyes, flicking back to their own books, in the end.