You found the tree yourself.
Backed up against it before I’d even stopped walking, like you’d been thinking about this the whole way here.
Maybe you had.
“Here,” you said. Not a question.
I stood beside you close enough that nobody passing would think twice,
just two people in a quiet corner of the park,
and you slid your hand under your waistband and looked at me and waited.
“Go on then,” I said.
Your eyes closed.
I watched your arm move, slow at first, your breathing change, your shoulders drop when you let go.
A jogger passed on the path behind me.
You didn’t stop.
Your breath catching now, lips parted, the distant sound of the park carrying on around us, a dog barking somewhere,
and you right here against this tree doing this, visible to everything and no one.
I watched your face.
“Don’t,” I said, when I saw you getting close.
Your hand slowed. A sound escaped you, small, involuntary, and you opened your eyes and looked at me and I held your gaze and shook my head.
You started again.
Slower this time, more careful, your jaw tight, trying to stay quiet, stay still,
and I stood beside you watching every second of it,
“Not yet,”
while the park carried on two hundred yards away, and you pressed harder, and you started to shake.
“Please,” you breathed.
Just that.
I looked at you.
The tree bark behind your head. Your hand still moving. Your face.
“Now,” I said.
