Girl in a bar

This is a story about

a girl who fell

in love with

a man she

didn’t know.

In the bar, in a chair
behind her and then everywhere.
Arms and shoulders
and scent, intoxicating.
Swallowed in the embrace
of a man, head resting on
the back of hers.
So random, so right.
No sight, just sound in the background.
No lust, just a moment of
stars and light.
Before her head even knew
what was happening,
her heart agreed
to dive into this act of his
that brought her
peace.

She had a void now, and a lack
she had not noticed
until this
very moment.
Sitting here in a bar,
people all around and yet
totally alone.
Friends, all of them,
she came to celebrate a birthday because
she really did love them.
They knew she did too, they just didn’t know about
the part of her that
had gone missing.
Neither did she.

The girl in the bar had not made the discovery of her own emptiness,
this ache to be held,
this basic
human need,
until he reached out his strong arms.

From behind over her small shoulders, one of them bare
because of the way her black t-shirt
hung over,
only a white bra strap shown there.
She wasn’t fierce as her shirt suggested.
White tiger face printed on black, eyes stamped over with that word.
She wasn’t fierce but she still
knew how to act like it.
He held her together,
only for a minute. Maybe two.
It was the shortest, simplest, deepest need she had craved desperately
for months.
Maybe even her whole life.

He had a
broken past and a heart
that wanted
something.
He held her there in the chair,
in the bar.
Wearing his rolled up, button up,
deep blue shirt.
She couldn’t help but drown out every sound around, and then she drowned in the cologne he wore just enough of
like it was the sea.

Maybe
he wanted a hug as badly as she and he thought, why not tonight?
Maybe even though
he was doing the
holding,
she held him together too.
Maybe
what he needed was that
same something
she felt but
never knew what,
until it was happening.
Until he made it happen.
She leaned into him, hand on his arm, the other pinned by his that went across her waist. Thumb running over.

Two almost strangers

who strangely,

seemed to hold each other

together.

If only for one moment.