Close Enough to Count as Touch

We walk, because walking has already become the thing that happens when neither of us proposes anything else, and the evening slips in soft-edged and undecided, and the light goes grey-gold and then quieter still, and Morningside loosens its collar a notch, and the hedges darken, the windows warm from inside out, and I match her pace without meaning to, not side by side exactly but near enough for sleeves to brush if one of us drifts half a step, which I do, and then she does, and the distance between us narrows by accident after accident.

And there’s no destination declared, no let’s-go-here energy, just the street unspooling itself underfoot, stone after stone after stone, and I’m aware of the sound of our walking, the double rhythm that tries to find a shared downbeat, her footfall lighter, quicker, mine slower, heavier, until they begin to align, not perfectly, but close enough to count as agreement.

And the city hums low around us with all that traffic far-off, and a bus sighs somewhere downhill, and the leaves whisper their small conspiracies, and I become suddenly aware of the heat of her through fabric, the way bodies begin to register each other before skin gets involved, and my thoughts start to thin, and my language loses its grip, and sentences dissolve into breath and pace and the quiet click of being here instead of anywhere else.

And we stop, because the walking runs out of itself for a moment, a corner holding us, a lamplit patch of pavement offering pause, and we stand there with that half-turn posture people adopt when they’re not sure if they’re about to continue or conclude, and I can feel the question in the air without hearing it spoken, the old familiar urge to step back, to turn this into something witty or temporary or safely unfinished.

But instead there’s just proximity, her shoulder near my chest, my hand hovering somewhere between useless and brave, and she looks at me—present—and whatever timing mechanism I usually rely on fails completely, and the kiss happens like that, without preface, without wind-up, not lunged-for or framed or claimed, just a small forward movement that closes a gap neither of us named, lips finding lips with a softness that surprises me, a gentleness that feels calculated rather than tentative, and for a second I don’t do anything at all, just register the fact of it, the warmth, the pressure, the way the world tilts slightly and then steadies.

And then I respond, because bodies are better at this than minds, and the kiss deepens by increments, a checking-in rather than a taking, and I’m aware of my hand finding her arm, the muscle there firm and real, her fingers catching briefly in my jacket as if to confirm that I’m still standing where I am, and then it’s over almost as soon as it begins, complete, a full sentence that doesn’t require a sequel, and we pull back enough to look at each other again, faces closer now, breathing a little altered, and there’s no rush to explain it, no need to categorise what just happened.

And the city resumes its low-level operations around us, unbothered, approving by omission, and I realise, standing there with the taste of her still present and the evening settling into itself, that this is how staying begins—not with promises or plans or declarations—but with a kiss that doesn’t demand anything more than the fact that it happened, and that neither of us moved away when it did.

THE SOUNDTRACK OF DALRY ROAD

Dalry Road is a book-length prose-poetry project set in Edinburgh, unfolding through long, rhythm-driven fragments that trace a city across night, memory, and movement. Neither novel nor traditional poetry collection, the book occupies a liminal space between narrative and lyric, where sentences stretch, loop, and accumulate like footsteps on wet stone.The text follows a wandering first-person voice moving through streets, bus stops, stairwells, and fleeting encounters in the hours before morning. Weather, light, and sound are not background but active forces: rain writes, streetlamps mutter, stone remembers. The city is experienced from within, not described from a distance, and language mirrors this intimacy through dense, breath-heavy phrasing and a jazz-like cadence influenced by writers such as James Joyce and Jack Kerouac.

Rather than telling a linear story, Dalry Road assembles an atmosphere. Past and present blur, faces recur in altered forms, and memory intrudes without warning. The fragments resist resolution, favouring repetition, drift, and sensation over explanation. What emerges is a portrait of urban consciousness at night—half-dreaming, half-alert—where walking becomes a way of thinking and listening.