Glorious Strange

by Kysra

There are times when they meet without touch across the distance of a crowded classroom, invisible as blue on blue. The silence stretches out between them, threadbare lace and tattered silk, insubstantial and unstable against the tumult barely released in the space they keep divided.

The words never spoken echo against the tide of their dammed conversation, and no one notices the absent glances or pointed glares, because they are granted and predictable. To outsiders standing watch, the looks are nothing and everything but vocal condemnation. Neither admits or denies meaning, for if there is nothing, there is no blame. Only she knows there is also no chance, and she can live with that because he does not take chances.

But she will never know she is wrong. There are many things unsaid, and it is the silence that is most poignant, for it speaks so many things forbidden to and by both; but none so clearly as:

"I love you."