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Bubble-Bubble-Roly-Poly

 And then you smiled and my heart leapt so high I thought it would come out of a nostril.  If you can make me laugh within the next ten seconds, you said, sitting cross-legged on the picnic blanket, I’ll kiss you.  Under normal circumstances, I would have dozens of one-liners ready to go, but the way you looked at me made my mind go blank and something in me regressed to a billion year-old fish state and I starting making bubble noises.  You know, the kind you make in front of a fish tank and want to get some dialogue going.  I needed something else, a more silly-surrealistic one-two because two funny things done together is much funnier than the sum of two funny things done separately.  So I did a roly-poly off the picnic blanket and down the hill, but the hill was rather hillier than expected.  On this mild, autumnal day, the roly-poly snowballed.  I was a tumbling seasonal anachronism.  Gravity became persuasive: one roly-poly turned into three, turned into five, turned into eleven.  Within all this spinning, I had a notion that the river - which had made our picnic even more beautiful - might be getting closer.  And indeed it was – and in spite of the accuracy of my fish impression, this man-fish couldn’t swim.  So there’s me thinking that’s the end of that then, isn’t it.  Dying for a kiss, then dying without a kiss.  Oh well, a shame for sure, but it’s not a bad way to go.  A little shambolic, but memorable.  You never do things by halves, his mother used to say.  That much was true.  Carved on my headstone: One roly-poly too many.  A unique inscription and a little mysterious.  He knew a gentleman who’d carve it by hand.  It would be a beautiful headstone and it would keep a future graveyard stroller guessing.  But you knew I couldn’t swim and had hot-footed it down the hill after me.  A splash and a scream from either or both of us. 

Seconds or hours passed. 

Laid out on the bank, soaked to the bone, you dripping wet above me.  You moved the hair from my eyes.  Say something, you said.  I coughed up the last of the water. I’ve forgotten the punchline, I replied.  You laughed.  No matter, you said. No matter.  Then you placed a hand on my cheek and kissed me.       

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