Short Story - Between The Two Of Us

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This story was written at today’s creative writing Workshop at Preston’s Just Write workshop, run by Maya Anna Ozolina, to who many thanks, along with hosting café, Ham & Jam. The story exercise was based on a magazine photograph, picked from a selection offered by Maya. Two other writers chose the same image and created very different work from it. This was mine. I have edited it a little from the notes I read out at the workshop, changing it from third person to first person narration. Between The Two Of Us A fleeting kiss through glass, my last direct memory of you. I saw you, and still see you in memory-reflection, detached from me, separated, returning the love only in fantasy, with only the imagined window of actual physical touch. You kissed the window-glass that divided us, and while I looked, open eyed, to soak in the last drop of you, I saw you close your eyes, blocking out the transparent visor shield by closing it in darkness within your eyelids, blocking the real me out too, in favour of some idealized me within your thoughts, if it was me at all and not another, with me already faded away. My kiss falls pathetically short, a symbol of all you expected from me no doubt, as in keeping my eyes open I see yours close me out even more than the cruel window that at at least let through the light your eyelids deny admission. My shock makes me hesitate, lips puckered just short of the window and a million miles from your lips. My mind tries to draw us together and picture your eyes and heart open to me. Perhaps I even ask you to open up through the sound proof glass as the car starts up, ready to draw you further away, possibly for a long time, and even more possibly forever. I still have no idea where you are going except it is somewhere I am not. You are well wrapped against the cold, in your cute hat, that I bought for you, while I am just in my tee shirt, expecting to return to the flat we shared soon. I never expected to feel this cold so soon, and so deep inside. If this was a movie, the door of the car would open again and you’d return to me, rekindling our romance as we weep tears of forgiveness. Part of my mind conjures up the kiss we deserve, lingering, lasting, enduring, full on contact, binding and passionate. Even apart I wonder if we will think of that kiss in our dreams, and share it in our texts and e-mails, represented by an X, or more than one cross. It will certainly remain a fresh kiss in my mind’s false memory, but alas, so will your closed eyes, behind glass, and my failure even to make contact with the transparent force field barrier. Perhaps one day you will return and such shields will evaporate as we rush into true embrace. You keep those lovely deep eyes closed while the steely disgusted impatient eyes of your taxi driver glance me up and down and roll upwards in disbelief. He is behind a window of his own and he has doubtless seen all this before. He doesn’t care one jot. The only concern he has is his already running meter. Our love slowly tearing asunder increases the fare, giving him a golden window of opportunity as my lovely good fortune looks away inside herself, and the car takes her away. I watch until I no longer see her in the window. Her eyes will open to a world without me, while mine will never close without seeing her. Arthur Chappell