Seen from behind, both of them - the boy and the girl - seemed to be of the same age. As they walked through the right sideway of the street, side by side, they looked more like walking reluctantly towards the death of their teens than towards the main road that will take them to their college, perhaps.
The boy had trimmed his hair very short and his stubble, seen while he turned towards his left once in a while, was a mix of the shyness of his lingering boyishness and the toughness of a looming manliness. He is wearing a loose fitting shirt which he did not tuck it inside his dark blue jeans, jeans with faded patches on the back of the thighs and below the knees. His canvas shoes looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned for months. All its white parts had turned muddy orange. The loose fitting shirt made him look older than he probably really is.
The girl is wearing a tight fitting t-shirt the color of which is unknown. Her jean is sky blue in color and her sports shoes are clean, though perhaps as old as the boys canvas shoes. She too hadn’t grown her hair much, tied in a pony tail they dangled melancholically reaching barely beyond her shoulders. As she walked the pony tail did not make her any bubbly. The very thin golden chain around her neck seemed to be there to protect the whiteness of her nape. Unlike him, she did carry a bag, a backpack over her shoulders.
He looked forward as if he couldn’t look anywhere else, but occasionally he turned his head towards the left, away from her. And she too is not very much unlike him; though once in a while (between minutes or between many centuries) she too tilted her head towards her left a little to sneak a look at him. They didn’t touch each other, separated by a light-year of a couple of inches.
And the most important parts of their body, their hands, moved back and forth, with their fingers flying past each other in sync with their steps. Their fingers were like two birds flying past each other in a clean, blue sky with dispersed traces of cotton clouds.
Yes, they talked to each other, certainly about petty things, college, class assignments, movies and movie stars, common friends, exams. And that was all.
The street did not watch them. But the street saw them and felt each of their footsteps. And the street was stifling within it a happy smile, a smile which it is holding back for unknown fears, with the sweet tension of mothers watching their children falling in love.
One word. At most a couple of more words and everything will change forever. Words because eyes are proving themselves useless and fingers aren’t brave enough.
After that his right hand will rest softly on her right hip, her left hand will wrap around his body and will clasp his shirt on the right side near his stomach, her head will tilt towards left unpretentiously and pillow it on his right chest, his head will tilt towards the right and rest on the top of her head with his right cheek cushioning itself on her hair. Still their eyes will not look each other’s eyes; neither will they look straight ahead as they used to do earlier.
And together they will walk through the sidewalk, which will by then have itself transformed itself into a wide walkway of cosmic proportions through which men and women have walked for thousands of years in time, space and across many lives.
And then the street will smile without any fears.
