Polish on the Parquet

I can smell the polish on the parquet floor. I can hear the shoes click across it. I can see its shine reflected on the well brushed, silky hair of youth.

As the flash explodes, the air is heavy with the hammer of heartbeats, twenty two aortas swelling and filling the way only unscathed coeurs can do.

The flash gives a second lightening strike, fast forwards near three decades and the picture shatters - the smiles fall from faces, postures slacken, rings appear and disappear from fingers, chasms are carved between shoulders that one touched, lives are made from stolen sideways classroom glances, some flourish and blossom, others fall like withered fruit from dead trees and some souls are so crippled they are barely holding on.

Better that they did not see their lives illuminated in that second blinding flash; their smiles would never have been so bright id they had.