You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss...

I got in my romantic mood tonight, after watching Casablanca. So I wrote a little flash fiction, barely 500 words long. Just a little riff. And it has nothing to do with Bogart or Bergman, I just really love that movie. If you haven't seen it, believe me when I say that you must.

BUS STOP

“We’ll always have Paris”, a dead man once said and became immortal. Sitting on that cold bus stop, the meaning of the words grabs you by the throat.

The buses come and go, come and go. You don’t care now. The one she was on, is far gone. Now you just look at them come and go, come and go.

“We’ll always have Paris,” you mutter as you’re sitting there, for the third time ever. Third time’s the charm, they say. Not this time.

Brush off the rest of the people. You two were alone, both times. Brush off the sun too. It was late.
Last passenger of the fleeing night.

She’s not there now obviously; now she’s too far away and beyond reach. Perhaps that was the magic. But then again, her ghost is right by your side, the memory of her aroma, more vivid than anything else around.

You two, sitting on the cold bench in the dark, while the city reveled in the distance.

So, what do you see?

Her face, of course. Who could forget beauty when it stared at them in the face? Her eyes, half-hidden behind strands of amber. Do you remember what you said?

“In your eyes I see the icy sea.”

She smiled. What did she say?

“Do they look so cold to you, then?”

Yes. She only had to look at you once; you took a plunge and were lost in the frost.

They also looked cold the second time. Her tears were snowflakes.

A bus is coming. Will she leave? Not yet.

While you are still sitting there, looking at her ghost – your ghosts – buses come and go in an endless loop. One of them took her away, twice.

The first time, she went straight to the back and waved through the window. Her hand was freezing but her smile said she didn’t care.

That smile was saying “I’ll see you soon.”

The second time, she rushed to the back once more. She waved; this time her fingers were tucked in her new gloves. She smiled.

That smile was saying “I’ll see you again.”

What was it that you told her, when the day eventually turned into night? When that stranger with the saddest eyes you ever beheld–and that was enough– became Her, what did you say, when her bus was almost in front of you?

“I’ll kiss you now, and you decide if I’m going to miss or not.”

She didn’t answer. Not with words.

And after that longest and shortest week of your lives finally came at an end in the headlights of a bus, you said the same, trying to remain jovial like a cursed jester.

“I’ll kiss you now, and you decide if I’m going to miss or not.”

Did she answer this time? She did.

She said, “Please, don’t miss.”

Consta... " I'll be home in a week ^^ " ...ntine