Episode 11: The Approval

The kiss!

Nobody’s looking.
The world has its back turned, the river breathing quietly beside us, the lights pretending not to notice.
Should we risk it?

A kiss.
Not the kind poems get wrong, not the kind movies dress up in cheap metaphors.
A kiss that can’t be explained - only understood.
A kiss that mouths define in a language older than words.

The river doesn’t mind.
It’s seen worse. It’s seen better. It’s seen us - waiting, stalling, wondering.
The lights won’t tell.
They flicker on without judgment, faithful witnesses to the soft rebellions of people like us.
The city understands.

We’re not fighting the world -
The world, if it could speak, would ask for more love, not less.
It’s only people who flinch at wanting.
Who shrink from tenderness like it’s weakness.
Who carry shame for needing what keeps them alive.

But not us.
Not here.
Not tonight.

They kiss.
Their kind.
That kind.
The kind you don’t tell stories about because it cannot be felt.
The kind you remember in the hollow of your chest long after the city forgets your name.
The kind that doesn’t ask for permission - it just is.

And when the kiss is over - if it ever really ends -
the river still breathes, the lights still flicker, the city still hums.

But we are different.
Marked.
Less alone.

Nobody’s looking.
But maybe, finally -
we are.