The personal space of alessandra gallo

I was driving back home from one of my lessons last night, next to the University where I graduated from, and I took the tree-lined alley I used to park the car into before running to get my place on a seat (preferably on a chair, but the stairs would do as well). I wasn't in a hurry, strangely enough. I always am. That night, however, the lesson had been relaxing, and it was a very pleasant evening, with a cobalt blue sky and no clouds at all and a white full moon casting its light on the trees bare boughs, so that they made curious drawings on the asphalt. Nor was I hungry, for a change. So I drove lazely, with a window down and a cigarette lit between my fingers. Very metropolitan, indeed. So I stopped at the crosslight and saw them. The couple. The kiss. He bent slightly forward and took her hair into his right hand and her chin into his left. Her head bent backward but just a little, eyes closed, in an effort not to raise her chin too much. You wouldn't want a woman to raise her chin too much, would you. I switched my radio off and watched the scene as if it were an old black and white movie. Silence. Only a swift breeze whistling and the tic tac of my car turning light. And I realized how a kiss in the street, under bare trees and a cobalt blue sky, needs a man to be taller and a woman to be shorter. You couldn't switch off the radio and listen to the wind blowing if she had to bend over him, and he, eyes closed, had to raise his chin. If just a little.