downtown

He didn't hug me when he met me downtown. Waiting in the rain, leaning against the lamp post, I could already feel the distance between us. The rain fell. It created a blur and his edges became incomplete, his glasses misted and unseeing. I walked toward him, slowly, taking my time. Weaving in and out of the drunken bums by the Metro Centre, avoiding the same putrid smell from the Chinese restaurant that was always empty. A nervousness started to rise within me, but the wetness was cooling to my face made of stone, cracked in a half-smile. I became aware of nothing else but him, as if a camera honed onto him. All I could focus on was that new, hand-knitted brown scarf, draped defiantly around his neck. Their new life protruding into ours. His white fingers were falteringly pushing their way through the loose weave of the threads. The familiar smell of him that I knew better than my own. A distraught voice inside calling out that it knew what was coming, and my stomach descending on a roller coaster. The roar in my ears became louder. Keep it light, keep it light. He opened his mouth first. I felt my mind slide onto the dirty sidewalk.

This isn't happening. This is all in my head. How did this happen.

I look into his scrunched face. Gravely, and still half in love with me, and tremendously sorry, he meets my eyes.