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Nov 2011
It started with a flip flop
And a good book
I had my nose buried so far between those pages
That the world around me was a dream
I was lost somewhere  in the land of vampires, and aliens, shrieking demons and horrors that instill fright into the very hearts of men
I was far too busy running through lines of Anne Rice and Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Dancing over pages of H.P. Lovecraft and Lewis Carroll
Singing praises of Edgar Allen Poe and C.S. Lewis
Indeed…Far too busy to pay attention to the mundane or boring
Why even blink at something as common-place and every-day as
Say
Boarding the bus.
My mind was dazed, still lost within those words
Still repeating lines, still suspended in the story
I had no need to look where I was going,
My body marched on without me, knowing the routine
I trudged along the pathway as I thought about how long I had to wait before I could retreat back into a story I knew far better than anything this world had to offer
And as my feet fell heavily on the floor,
it happened
Like fireworks, like lightening, like thunder, like an earthquake happening beneath the converse on my feet…yet above the grooved black floor of the bus below.
Something slipped in between the two, disrupting the fantasy world I had already returned to
I jolted, you stumbled,
I nearly tripped you (at least i could have...although you like to say otherwise)

I had disrupted your world
Your train of thought
Your daydream
But worst of all
I had stepped on your flip flop…

The glare you gave me was enough to make me die a little
I could think of nothing more than to take my seat and withdraw myself from what I had just done, the scene I felt I had caused
Your hazel eyes had been on me for only a mere second or two
But that was far too long for any eyes to gaze at me
I wanted to lose myself once more in the sanctuary of thin, discolored pages
I longed to feel the comforting, forgiving arms, of characters I knew and loved, wrap around me as they dragged me back into their world
I may have mumbled a small
“sorry” before quietly deciding to myself to avoid you at all costs from now on

The Fates, of course, would simply not have that though
Oh no…my life is never so simplistic as that...the Moirae seem to have this need to throw chaos into it every now and again
And that is exactly what you caused

One day, you approached me, and commented on my reading choices
You sounded approving, and I grimaced inside
Getting your approval was at the top of my list of things not to do
How was I to know what I mistook for hate, for utter loathing, had turned into affection for a girl much like yourself?

A girl with her nose in a book and her head in the clouds,

How was I to know that simply allowing myself to talk to you, to let you walk beside me as I headed to class
would lead to where it has?
Although, I must admit, you weren’t nearly as vile as I thought you were going to be
But still when I entered my class I was glad to be free of you
And much to my pleasure I was switched to an earlier class, no more bus rides with this strange boy I was now utterly confused about.

Oh, but I saw you around,

And somehow, in one conversation you switched from foe, to friend
And a few…hundred…(or so it seems), text messages later
And awkwardly adding you on  facebook
"Friend" turned into something I couldn’t quite describe,

But oh the places we would go;
The things we would see,
The laughs, smiles, tears
We would share,
The compliments you’d force me to accept,
The foods I would make you try,
And the smile I couldn’t resist
(The one you tried to hide at first),
Who could have known that we could end up with something as beautiful (something as amazingly, wonderfully, stupidly brilliant!)  as this,
When it started, with a flip flop
Mariah Padgett
Written by
Mariah Padgett
741
   Ahmad Cox
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