The Kiss

All around them, as they stood together, yet apart, there were the sounds of insects ticking, tick-tick-tick-tick in succession like echoes off the hillside. If drops of water fell to the ground splattering off leaves, they too would make such sounds. And then when he kissed her, his lips touching her cheek briefly, it was as if snow melted in the sun that now lit up the sprigs of bottlebrush, their green appearing like silver in the haze of morning light. Pearl like dewdrops clung to the leaves and stems as they had all night but soon they would disappear, evaporating as if they never existed. There never had been snow, but she imagined it licking her face in feathery lightness, soft and damp and quick like his kiss. “Why did it take you so long?” she asked him abruptly and he said, taking her warm hand in his much larger one and patting it affectionately as he would a child’s, “I’ll tell you something someone told me once. Three years for man is a fleeting instance for God.”
“But you don’t believe that do you?” she asked incredulous, looking at his hand holding hers. He did not answer her this time, simply smiling gently. She remembered something else someone had told her once, that if you want to be convincing, never quote another but say it as if you meant it yourself. There never had been love and even if there was, love was like dewdrops, clinging to mere stalks like it would never let go, shining brightly until it evaporated.