The Hour We Steal

 

The Hour We Steal
We meet at the edge of the park after dark,
the path lit only by sodium lamps and the low moon.
Your coat is damp from the mist rolling off the river;
mine smells of the subway, metal and strangers’ breath.
We do not kiss right away.
Instead we stand close enough to feel each other’s heat,
the small corona of warmth between our bodies
like a secret the city has not yet noticed.Later, in the narrow kitchen with its single bulb,
you slice an apple while I watch the knife move—
steady, deliberate, the way your hands move over me
when no one is watching.
The fruit bleeds pale juice onto the board;
you offer me a piece and I take it from your fingers,
our mouths meeting first around the crisp flesh,
then again, slower, tasting what we have carried here
through rain, through years, through the weight
of not being expected.This is no idyll.
Outside, the streetlights buzz like trapped insects;
sirens thread the night with their thin red cry.
We are not invisible, though we try.
Every touch is a small act of evidence,
a refusal to let the world erase us
by pretending we do not exist in this form—
two women, middle-aged, unafraid to want
what we have learned to name.I rest my forehead against your shoulder,
feel the pulse at the base of your throat,
steady as a metronome counting what we are allowed.
We do not speak of forever.
We speak of tomorrow: the market, the laundry,
the letter we will write together if the laws shift again.
In the meantime this—
your hand in mine under the table,
the quiet agreement to keep choosing each other
in a world that still prefers silence.We lie down on the narrow bed,
bodies fitting the way old books fit a shelf—
worn, marked, necessary.
The city keeps its restless rhythm beyond the window.
We keep ours: breath, skin, the soft collision
of what we have made from what was given.This is how we live—
not in defiance alone,
but in the patient, stubborn construction
of a life that answers back.