Silent Chorus

Silent Chorus
Thabet-Abbas C. Burias

It’s 2:05 in the morning and I can’t get myself to sleep. The stars outside are blinking a silent chorus, causing me to remember that night when the stars also blinked a silent chorus for an audience of two.

The sun was still a long way from rising on Wednesday, February 5, 2003. A cool breeze and a slight drizzle kept us company as we talked for hours on the open terrace, oblivious to the rest of the world, taking time off only to notice the star ocean above us. Topic upon topic came and went, but still we refused to admit that we were getting sleepy, tingling all over almost as if sensing some big event about to happen, like the night before your birthday and you can’t wait to open your presents.

We had been sitting there side-by-side since early that night, rubbing elbows, enjoying a conversation that was there solely to relieve the tension from what we both knew was coming. For the past few days our schedule had been the same: after I worked, I could come and pick her up, and we would go wherever we felt like going. We almost never planned our gimmicks, and the one time we did plan to go to the movies, we arrived too late for the last full show, and we ended up in this small, but cozy café near her place.

By 2:30AM, the breeze had turned from cool to cold, and we had to lean on each other’s side for warmth. Although we had sat beside each other so many times, it was the first time I had ever been that close to her. I had never even held her hand, and yet I might as well have been hugging her tightly, because the surge of emotion you get from simply feeling the bare skin of someone you are attracted to against yours is so overwhelming that to hold her hand would just be icing on the cake at that moment. The tingling I was talking about had now intensified to the point where I had to hold myself back from blurting out how I felt, and I could tell that she was going through the same ordeal. I could no longer hear the words she was saying, since all my thoughts were focused on the warmth of her shoulder against mine. Nothing else mattered during that moment. It was just her and me in our warm bubble, surrounded by the cold predawn breeze and the tiny drizzle drops that touched your skin as if to remind you that there really still are beautiful things left in the world.

All my senses were screaming inside me as I looked into her gentle eyes and her soft, Katie Holmes mouth. I LOVE YOU! CAN’T YOU SEE?! I LOVE YOU! Please let me hold you. I have been wanting to hold you since you first smiled at me and knocked me out of my senses. My chest was pounding right then and there. I am thankful now for the dim light of the terrace, which hid my deep-red face. My only thought was to try to find a way to get her hand in mine. What happened next, I will never forget. Either I was too transparent, or she had read my mind.

I had been telling jokes a lot that night, trying to hide the nervousness I was feeling to the bones. I started to notice that as she laughed, she had begun to hit me playfully on the arm at the same time. I took this as my cue. I gathered up my guts and, as I finished my next joke, caught her hand with the skill of a trapeze artist as it hit my arm. Surprisingly, she made no attempt to get it back. Later, as I turned my head towards her and looked, I saw that she was smiling at me. She had seen through me. She had read my mind, and she liked what she read. I found myself caught in her gaze as we looked deep into each other’s eyes.

Surrounded by tiny drizzle drops, we kissed our first kiss under a silent chorus of glittering stars at 3:00AM.



If you are ever wondering what her side of that night’s story is, you can ask her yourself, or I can ask her for you. She is now my wife, and we now have a son and a daughter.