11:31 Face.

Something about a skyline.

Blindsided by a smile that both beckons and intimidates in equal measure, all at once I felt the dizzying altitude of being airborne and looking out through a plexi-glass window upon a hundred thousand lit up windows of an unfamiliar skyline. Her incandescence hit my chest as if it were a prism, refracting light to places where before there had only been darkness. A noxious concoction of admiration and pain billowed through me like flocks of restless birds. Pain that I might only ever have time to scratch the surface of knowing the secrets that lay behind those lit up windows.

   Time passes like a merciless brushfire, and the immutable disquiet of uncertainty is drowned out by a warmth which only exists as the product of circumstances that seem too coincidental to be real. The darkness of an unfamiliar city becomes almost luminous in it’s presence, vying in desperation to come between two bodies that like roots intertwine, aware of nothing but every single breath, every slightest touch. A week of painful longing has rendered all pretence of subtlety and grace an obstacle to what has already been agreed upon by way of telling glances and stifled intake of air. Unspoken, yet foreboding in its undeniable presence, a great storm is brewing. Gentle, tranquil motions make up its beginnings, though every movement contains a palpable sense of unbearable tension. The tumult of want increases at a frantic pace until finally, something has to give. All order is lost as the storm descends into a beautiful symphony of burning chaos and destruction. All coherent thought is caught up in it and all meaning of time is lost. An hour or a thousand years may have passed before it reaches its deafening crescendo. Then it subsides, giving way to calmness and clarity. The air is clear.

   She stretches upwards, I close my eyes. When I permit them to open again she is still there. This is real. Like gazing upon a map of the world, I despair at how little of her I could explore in one lifetime. It becomes impossible to regret a single thing I have done in my life up until this point, for the simple reason that had I done anything differently, I would not be here to witness this moment.