4. Gazes

She wore a red dress. She was across the room. He gazed. He felt. He named the feeling love.

The gaze is with him still as, forty years later, he tells of her standing across the room, and the red dress, and the deciding gaze. He says in so many words he loves her still, and she gazes, loving him still, and we are quiet and embarrassed and wondering how it could have been, whether it was, so simple.

The red dress made it simple, such power in the gaze across the room and lives. It must have been more complicated than that, but we have no proof. We have skepticism, routine ironies, and reflexive distaste for sentiment. They gaze.