Bric-a-Brac
Little things that no one needs --
Little things to joke about --
Little landscapes, done in beads.
Little morals, woven out,
Little wreaths of gilded grass,
Little brigs of whittled oak
Bottled painfully in glass;
These are made by lonely folk.
Lonely folk have lines of days
Long and faltering and thin;
Therefore -- little wax bouquets,
Prayers cut upon a pin,
Little maps of pinkish lands,
Little charts of curly seas,
Little plats of linen strands,
Little verses, such as these.
-- Dorothy Parker
They start as bric-a-brac.
They start as nothing more than toys on each other's shelves: just something to pull down and play with when bored.
Somewhere along the line (and neither can pinpoint the exact location), they become something more. They don't know what they become exactly, but they know it's more than toys.
Their pranks are dismissed as petty playtime for work weary minds, but it's in these unguarded "nothing" moments where "everything" starts to take shape.
Co-worker becomes friend becomes best friend becomes something a little more complicated. Oxford can't explain what they are. Dictionary definitions and an author's diction paint an incomplete picture; but it's still a picture he'd hang in his gallery. He would show the picture to her, hand her a brush and say, "Let's finish it together. I can't do this without you."
He thinks that sometimes she might take him up on the offer, but when he gets close she backs away as if he's started playing too rough. He's never sure of all the rules in this game, but he thinks he might be able to win it someday if he's a very lucky boy.
They flirt and they tango (occasionally foxtrot), but mostly they tiptoe. They fill their time together with falsely meaningless passion, taking comfort in the coziness of "just friends" because "just friends" isn't so risky and nobody loses a turn with "just friends." But somehow they always end up scraping elbows or knees, and there isn't a band-aid with a cartoon character on it big enough to cover it all up.
He takes her from the toy shelf permanently and keeps her in the pocket near his heart, and can only hope she's done the same.
When he decides to tell her (Iloveyoujustneededyoutoknow), he knows it violates the rules of the game, but he's willing to skirt the rules to get what he wants. She can cry "Foul!" or toss the game board into the air and scatter the pieces if she wants, but every bit of him shakes with the hope that she won't.
But when she says "I can't" on that balmy evening, he can see her shove him back onto that toy shelf, even though they both know he doesn't belong there any more.
He isn't a toy.
He is a real boy (who just wants to be her man).
(And she wants it, too, but the real world starts swirling all around her... so she just pretends to be a little girl playing with her dolls: "I think we're just drunk.")
