Act I: 

From the dock of a dry pond, I caught a phantom fish. I don’t know how to fish, so he sat behind, arms and legs cocooning me with warmth and imagination. His fingers lit sparks down my arms as he slid to help hold the invisible pole, swallows swarming overhead as the breeze stirred our carefree hair.

We cast the playful line out over the dry earth. I didn’t see the splash because I was turned to his face, blue eyes twinkling against the glow of fading daylight. 

The fish we caught may not have been real, but the kiss he planted on my lips most certainly was. 

Act II: 

I Love You peered through the slight opening of parted lips, aching for freedom but shackled by doubt. As soft moans floated out, unrestrained, I Love You stood still, caught somewhere between holding on and letting go. 

When does the wife of another man tell the husband of another woman that she loves him? The agreements may make it ethical, but the answer to that question remains a foggy haze of uncharted waters. 

Stars winked down at that familiar house nestled between whispering palms and a dry pond at the heart of an orchard. Dancing on the tip of a tongue, I Love You was an inaudible whisper that in the end, decided to stay cocooned within just a little longer. 

But in or out, I Love You still exists — in the feeling of a breath caught at a feather’s touch, in the whisper of my eyes to his, and in the steady warmth his presence brings to my heart. 

One of these days, I Love You will flutter out into that magical space that exists between us.