Bills and coins given to the man in strict, orderly sequence, and she offers another smile, brief as she gathers the crisp bags of her purchases.  Thank you, and she cannot understand why it is easier to say thanks to a man she does not know when beside her – separated by two, three people, so near she can brush him with her fingers as she sweeps hurriedly past – is a young man she knows so intimately.

Fragments of poetry ring in her mind, but she ignores them and dances in the steps of a fast walk into the throbbing push of the winter crowd.

-

                He is clumsy as always and he thinks maybe he should not have reached out to touch her shoulder, even as the yellow being he shares deepest friendship with glances curiously up; he does not think fast enough, though, and his fingers sweep over the collar of her coat, the spiky rim of orange hair framing over the collar as the friend asks in his simple language what it is, who he sees.

                Hey! he smiles brightly, grinning like an imbecile, and she twirls on her heel, graceful and wiry but strong and lean – as she always has been.  Is that really you?  I haven't seen you in, and this is where his tongue grows weak, unable to add the bittersweet simplicity of forever.  I missed you.  So he settles for turning to the friend and ignoring the unsettled emotions in his stomach and the wistful look on her face, reintroducing one who has forgotten to one who has not.