Be responsible

Keep your distance

Limit contact

And all at once the most ordinary, once invisible touch is screaming its goodbye

The casual touch of an arm

The brush of a stranger’s fingers as I pay for my tea

The inadvertent jostle of the clumsy man in the bread isle

The companionable sharing of a newspaper in my local café

I miss it already

My body reaches into the space and recoils from what it longs for -

too much and too little all at the same time

And then he’s next to me at the petrol station coffee machine

the requisite safe distance between us is diligently observed

Still, somehow, he’s right next to me

even closer than that

‘Here’s how it works’, he says, sensing my need before I’ve even asked

This contact is like stumbling on a hot spot in cold open water

His face is a-light, his eyes dance playfully - never leaving mine

There was a time I would have thought ‘He’s flirting with me’ and brushed him off

But I know that he isn’t: and I won’t

He’s flirting with us, with the space, with our hungry souls

My heart jumps, ignites in a moment

He’s so beautiful and suddenly so am I

Maybe this is what flirting truly is, has always been

a lesson in becoming beautiful

a lesson in contact

Contact - the safest, most responsible, contagious kind