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The sky is dark with the weight of early morning. And the city is starless, a vast expanse of nothing to veil the sky-scraping buildings with night.
You walk, alone, cold air in your lungs. The sidewalk is well-traveled and the street lights cast a dim light over the stone, asphalt slightly damp from a late night rain. All the clouds fell away before the clock struck midnight, and now, you’re left without the petrichor from soft grass and instead with the chill of wet pavement.
The street is empty. Maybe that’s why you wanted to be out here, for an escape from noise; though a city is alive, even at night, the peace and quiet is a comfort. Or maybe the quiet stresses you out, and you feel nothing but a tremor in your fingers that comes from everywhere but the cold.
A bustling city can only feel empty for so long. And the farther you walk the more the inevitability grows, voices filtering through the air from a distance you can’t place. Your steps slow, whether intentional or not, and you search for the faces that make the noise.
Your gaze falls to a couple, rounding the corner at the top of the street. They walk on the same side of the street as you, stumbling in clumsy elation, and you nearly come to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk at the sight of them.
They look so happy.
Their existence is effortless, all the ways you want to be loved. A taller man pulls a shorter into his chest, feet scuffing against the sidewalk with all the recklessness of people who are unseen. Laughter carries through the air, giddy and alight, the sweetest sound to wrap around your ears in a call of contagion.
Elbows knock into sides and shoulders brush against biceps, gait heedless and footfalls heavy against the damp pavement. When they lock eyes through the darkness, you swear you can feel the way they love each other, nothing but sweet admiration holding onto the space between them. It looks like perfection, and maybe your view is biased, but you’ll find a way to envy the strangers on the sidewalk who look so hopelessly in love.
They can’t be anything but in love. To say those two were anything but would be a sin to all the things love is made of; what is admiration if not two hopeless boys laughing in the street? The world could be falling apart beneath your feet and you’d still see the beauty in their minute existence, nearly tripping over their own feet and each other’s ankles even when they’re looking down at the ground.
You fight the smile on your face; it’s too obvious that you’re watching.
But they’re in their own little world, whichever world it may be. They pass you by without acknowledgement, the quiet “I love you”s that fall from their lips doing just as well unspoken. It’s as if those three words pierce through their laughter, nothing but the purest form of joy to swallow you whole on your cold early morning.
And even when they’re gone, you can’t help but think of the way they had been.
Two strangers so hopelessly in love, two strangers that didn’t say anything besides laughter. It hadn’t even been spelled out with undeniability that they were boyfriends, but you know, you know, for they carried themselves like two people who couldn’t get enough of each other. Their hands chased each other’s fingers and their lips could’ve been stained by the other, a walk on an early morning done without apology and as if nothing else existed but them.
You quite like the look of that. And even as you pick up your pace again, wandering down all the blocks you know around buildings you’ve learned, your mind wanders back and back again to the very way they were. Maybe it was just what you needed, something to take your mind off whatever it was that dragged you out of your apartment so early in the morning, and you’ll bask in the sweetness of two strangers drunk on love for as long as you can let yourself.
Perhaps they were still riding the high of a young relationship. Brand-new love, untainted, two people who haven’t fought yet and don’t think they ever will. That sweet sense of naivety that may have scorned you in the past, but in the moment, it feels so, so good. And they’ll listen to the sound of the other’s laughter and say it’s the best sound in the world, and you’ll cling onto a stranger’s laugh for as long as you can remember the way it rang.
Or maybe they’d been together forever, passing through bouts of being tired of each other and screaming at closed doors. Maybe this was one of those smaller moments, when all the problems they have to deal with in real life seem to fade away, and just for a little while, it’s nothing but joy and early mornings. The sweet bliss of no worries, of nothing existing at the same time as everything does, for those eyes that glimmer beneath street light and moist air are the whole world put in one place.
Or it could even be normalcy, and maybe they go out for early morning walks every day or every Thursday or every other weekend. Maybe this is just their routine, and today is only another day of it, and they laugh with each other in the street all the time but you’re never there to watch it unfold.
It could be the first time, or the last time, or any time in between. They could be strangers who just met at a bar or lovers married by unseen rings, or they could be any of the spaces in between. You’ll never know, for they’re only strangers to you, and it’s impossible for you to even know as much as their names. The only thing you can do is assume, and you'll do that a thousand times over, for what are strangers for if not drawing assumptions across?
You feel like a fly on the wall to another person’s love story. In a way, it’s kind of beautiful.
Two strangers, two people you’ll never see again. Two people who you only caught for that one brief moment, a moment that you might hold onto for as long as you can. And one day you’ll forget, for it’s only the inevitability of the human psyche, but until that day comes, you’ll remember and you’ll dream and you’ll envy.
It’s the memories that get held onto without ever speaking them back into existence, the ones that only come up in soft whispers over creased pillows when there’s nothing left to talk about. The kind of story not meant for an icebreaker, but only meant for each other, retold and retold to the ears that were there to see it and laughed about even in the future.
A moment shared between two people. And somewhere, in the not-so distance, you watched those two people love each other in one of the most beautiful ways imaginable: wordlessly, carelessly, without regret.
You smile with your hands in your pockets. The city is dark and silent again, love lingering someplace in the cool night air.