no need for words now, we sit in silence

K was watching a Youtube video of a man signing to The Black Eyed Peas Tonight’s gonna be a good night, and after the second viewing, S wandered out “to the porch.” This was how he referred to the stoop of two steps of concrete leading down to the walkway that night. Drinks dangling comfortably in our hands, we sat down together on the slab. An entire person could have fit in the space between us. We knew this, but we pretended not to know. We feigned comfort in our own little spheres.

It seemed like moonlight at first, but it was more the streetlight. It might have tinged the green leaves yellow, it might have made yellow leaves glow a bit iridescent. We had been drinking for too long to know for sure. But the small leaves clustered together and swayed slightly, lit by the moon and by the streetlights, together, shimmering against the night sky.

The cool night air kept us calm, but we did not shiver. The dog emerged and sat down in the front lawn. I changed the music to Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds, and returned to my place on the stoop. K came out and it was only natural that she should sit between us. We all looked up at the breeze that we could not really see, and for a time, no one said a word.

Take a snapshot, photograph the moment, and it would have seemed like nothing. Nondescript house, three friends sitting around on a stoop on a Friday night, gazing about with buzz-filled glassy eyes. But it was so beautiful, so universal, so everything that has always been and always will be. May there always be stoops and beautiful nights and friends raising their glasses. And may there always be more than meets the eye- the unspoken tension, the possibilities, the delicious torture of uncertainty. Every bit of it, so so beautiful.