The Potential of the Instance

There are these moments that hesitate, times when what might become is held there in the potential of the instance. The world seems to hold itself poised on the edge of becoming some new place; some new way of living seems to hang there, just waiting for something to happen.

You sit there, watching your own fingertips caressing the wine glass as though you are waiting for them to decide which way the world will turn. You wait to see if the world will continue turning as it always used to, or if it will spin off on some new tangent, with us both holding on tightly, neither of us sure which way it is all going to go, or where it will end.

It is as if the world has grown still and silent around us, as though the backgrounds of our lives up to this point have gone out of focus. It is as though the background noises of our lives have been faded out. We both watch your long, delicate, fingers tracing those routes of our possible futures around the stem and bowl of that glass.

Then, suddenly, the world is turning again. The crowds around us come back into focus and the sounds of the world fade up again as everything goes about its own life around us, as you look up into my waiting eyes, as your fingers end their journeys, and then you smile at me… and I start breathing again.