Scattered Drumbeats...

This will reveal what an incurable romantic I am! I have to admit it was partly motived by a Rumi quote that I wanted to use somewhere; this seemed like a good place. It's also touching on that very strange area of "internet romance" and its expectations, hopes... It's my entry in the Creative Writing Challenge:

A light rapping, knuckle on wood, breaks my solitude. In the dark warmth of the evening, I stop, listen, not expecting anyone, and ignore it. The light but insistent scattered drumbeat on the door tugs at me, continuing until I rise from my notebook, pull my cotton shirt around me. On one side of the door I breath into the soft darkness, unsure; my hand on the handle, I whisper into the crack, “Hello…?”

In the silence of an almost inaudible gasp, I hear indecision, an awaited moment from which one could yet flee, even if what one was looking for has been found, it’s fearful, and holding back for what seems like minutes before the response, “Hello…I, Miriam, I know you weren’t expecting me, I… needed to come, I’m sorry…”

“Who are you?” I whisper into the darkness and silence of the Summer night that spreads itself around the rustlings of moths whirring in the dim porch light, a light that reveals a man, in a soft summer shirt and jeans, standing at the door.

His arms almost tensed, yet awkwardly beside him, his heart full of desire, knowing his need and her recalcitrance, and feeling ashamed and exhilarated to be at her doorstep, looking at her tired and worried face as if it were a vision, “I … had to ...”

On the doorstep of my house, at the threshold of my life, in the night, I found myself wrapped deeply in the loving arms of a man I had never met, but always known. And I whispered to him lines from Rumi in the tightness of our embrace, "The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere, they're in each other all along." We became two sighs in the enveloping darkness, a twin blossom of a moonflower, a double rainbow in the night sky, another hope for the future..