First Date at the Carnival

The carnival for our first date was all lights and electricity. I knew it was just my heart beating faster, but I felt the lights shining brighter, and the people felt warmer as we walked through the Earthly star system to the soul of the world. I told him this and his short, quaint laugh filled me from top to bottom with the love I was ready to pour out for him.
“Yeah,” he said as his eyes strayed away from mine towards the heart of the night. I could tell his thoughts were somewhere else, and I hoped that he was dreaming, like I was. Dreaming about the world and the future and this moment right now. I knew he was distracted by the dream we were living because his only responses were monosyllabic at best. But I would not hold that against him. Tonight was ours, and I was his, and he was the world's.
We went to a booth where he told me he would win a “really big stuffed animal” for me. A this booth, you squirt water from a gun into a clown's mouth and make a little horse run across the big plastic board. I saw the metaphor for our lives instantly unfold. I was the horse – oddly enough, my power animal – and he was shooting the water to make me go faster and faster, reaching for an end to my means. Reaching for a goal: the “really big stuffed animal” (clearly a representation of God and Heaven). And upon reaching the goal, he would smile, holding the water pistol aloft, and we would hold God and Heaven in both our hands and the world would end, drowning us, as he drowned the clown, in symbolic Water of Love.
“Power animal?” he said, with a raised eyebrow. Curious about my world and my reality, he was distracted enough to not win the grand prize, but headstrong enough to win 3rd, which allowed him the choice of a small crab or a box of pencils. He asked which I wanted.
“The small crab,” I said with gusto. “The box of pencils is a bad omen. Sharp ends, you know.” Again, I could see his curiosity bubbling, but he said nothing as he turned and started walking away.
“How about a Haunted House?” he whispered not facing me, which had an extremely sensual effect that I was not expecting. His nonchalant attempt at indifference made it clear how much he wanted me. Even the juxtaposition of his apparent coldness with the looming possibility of a haunted house, which would make me cringe and huddle close to his endearing chest, was extremely sexy to me. So we walked to the haunted house and heard the chainsaws running somewhere within and I turned to him to let him know that the haunted house was like my heart: chamber upon chamber and the people pulsed through it searching for an exit or something to believe in behind the masks and chainsaws. But only we'll know that we're the real spirits, and as spirits, we float through the ravines of the world coming together at the center where we'll stay forever.
Then I reached for his hand and I felt our fingers entwine like a metaphor for our souls. I felt fireworks from nowhere, I felt blood rush to my head. I felt existence crushing in on me. And then he broke off, saying that he didn't feel like “doing the haunted house anymore.” I understood. I don't think I could have taken much more joy either. The overwhelming flood of emotion that had come with our hands touching was like a soliloquy of our souls.
We walked silently, pensively toward the true heart of the world, the center of the universe that spins with all the fury of an out of control solar system: the ferris wheel. Its lights and motion lit and moved the entire world, it was an engine of hearts, a disc of unthinkable wonder, where, when your seat stops at the very top to allow new people on, the universe of possibilities opens up to you...
So it was as it creaked to a halt with me and him perched closer to the stars than anyone else on Earth. Alone, miles from Gaia, feet no longer touching Terra Firma, he leaned over and kissed me. His hand moved to my breast and I told him I'd never felt the fabric of another person's soul until this moment.
As my comment settled in, he leaned back to his side of the seat, a look of shock and aghast sealed on his face. Obviously, he had seen the beauty of my statement and didn't expect something so perfectly right to come from me at that exact moment. But the world is full of surprises.
After, he walked me home, and I paused on my front porch and poised for the good night kiss, but being the gentleman he is, he declined. He said “see you later”, and I watched him as he vanished into the cold darkness, but I was not worried because on his lips hung the promise of later, and despite the suffocating darkness, that promise will live forever.