She
paints her lips with a false confidence,
smacks them together
and sits
and waits.
Her apprehension perches beside her
on the lonely park bench.
She pushes it away,
an embarrassing parent
hugging her outside the school gates.
She stitches her words together
to avoid the inevitable stumble
over ragged letters
and shards of silence
and talk so small it could be shattered underfoot
by one false step.
She takes a last, discrete glance
into her compact mirror,
at a smile she’s tried on nine or ten times,
and rummages in her hand bag
for the girl she wishes to be.

He
slips out of the door before
his mother's confetti of compliments.
Cologne clings to his shirt
with a fastened top button
that suffocates his bad manners.
His mind floats on the image
of what she will look like,
what she will wear. 
He sculpts messy-smart hair
and a stare that wants to undress
her every insecurity.
To see beneath those painted lips.
He sits.
And he waits.