Romance

Romance should never be permanent. Let love abide for eras and lifetimes, romance is not a thing of such endurance. It is instead a thing of turning seasons and perfect afternoons and strings of precious moments. It is of dreamy wandering through autumn leaves with the first of the frosts nibbling at ears and noses, of the careless but deliberate brush of hands across a café table. What weight of roses or volumes of poetry could compare?

Romance is the secret smile of remembering, away from that time and place, one tiny snippet suspended in amber. His tone of voice and that twitch around his mouth as he makes the first joke at my expense. The warmth of his breath and the brush of lips against beard.  That instant of unbidden recall that makes everything else melt away and be forgotten.  A sudden cough to hide the giggly catch in my voice, a breath to remember what I was in the middle of before I drifted.

Let romance always be fleeting, never predictable or fossilised within a timetable.  For if love is nothing more than the blissful accident finding a person to make you feel more alive, then let romance be the surprise of seeing him open up before me as I begin to shed my armour.

He who allows the danger of optimism back into my heart and makes its porcelain chambers soften and move again without shattering.