The parliament lake and a stranger

We dangled our feet from the edge, a meter away from the water, yet hesitant to fully stretch them out. Our hands touched the damp tiles that built upon each other to form the lake in front of us. A red hue dispersed around the surroundings of the cigarette I threw into this lake (at least it was nice to imagine this). You noted how my lips were always leaving a trace, and how even when the trace is dissolved it is still floating in it’s surrounding, just like it did in that water. I kissed your hand and proved your theory right. “ Now rub it off,” I said. So you did, and it was gone. I suppose that meant that you were mistaken.
We talked about traces, about what I left behind. I wondered if you ever thought about me as a presence not a memory or a mark. Somebody told me that you thought I was beautiful. As soon as I left you would tell about the intoxicating absence that lingered in your throat and made it impossible to ooze out any meaningful words. This was the only way I knew I meant something. Not by your words but by others. I hung on to this, but my grip on you loosened by the day.

A man came to talk to us, I don’t know why he did that but it hadn’t been the first time. There was a certain appeal to the two of us that attracted the strangest saddest people. They would sit next to us and restlessly would pile onto us their lives and its miseries- as if ours weren’t bad enough. This man did the same, in his hand was a letter, unfolding this letter sped up the twirl of desperation in our bodies. It pinned down as words and numbers. It pinned through skin and skulls, tiny stabs spread across our bodies. I say ours, because we became scared for these strangers, for the depth underneath our dangling feet and the height of our heads from the ground. Their fear was the catalyst of ours.

We talked more than we kissed, although occasionally you had a look of urgency, as if your mouth was craving the touch of mine. My lips the medium through which I thought my despair would indent an uncertainty of loss. My dear, I thought it would say. My dear I need you, my lips need you don’t let them loose you. Despair pressed on, until, indeed it left a red stain (at least it was nice to imagine this). I had imprinted my lines onto yours; I thought it must now be sure you understand the tongue of my lips.
But I was mistaken.
I lit another cigarette; you had a puff even though you disapproved. I looked at where our mouths had touched the brown part to see perhaps whether our lines had at least combined there.
I thought of traces, I thought of what trace you left behind. You had a way to leave absence, or an enigma of such impossible measures that I was always left with nothing. Your mind rarely spoke; Still, I thought I could understand at least the whispers of it. My dear, I thought they would say. My dear, I need you, my eyes need you don’t let them loose you. Instead my ears were thundered with absence. The absence of your words led to an absence of my kisses, and soon the water underneath our legs seemed to be rising.
But the lake beneath us was simply a void filled with pointless water. Water easy enough to wrestle through and find out it has only been placed conveniently to hide the emptiness of what it is filling.