I DO

He peels my eyes from the pavement, and he doesn't even try. Me with hands stuck deep in winter pockets, deciding what's warmer: fist or fingers. A solemn promise weighing down my every single thought. Yes, yes, of course, of course I will, dummy. His smiling, oblivious face, so filled with joy.

He never wants to see balloons deflated, or a losing team rejected. He is the fulfilment king. I have agreed with the question he had never thought was in question. And so even in a Tuesday morning pedestrian-killer crossroads I think of him. I bump into countless people, skewing so many carefully calibrated urban angles off-course. A woman in an angry power suit hits my shoulder so hard that when I examine it later, in the safety of the company restroom, I have a brooch-bruise the colour of plums.