Love Bites: Open Mic, Open Hearts

You find love in a corner, looking for a morsel of truth in the sunset. On the third Sunday of each month, you’re at a record-store-turned-community-café in Marchmont. The sky is orange and the room is packed: knees bumping, elbows clacking, bodies held, the air thickened by prose, melody, and poetry. They call it Fill This Space – an open-mic night quietly fundraising for Palestine.

It’s full now, it’s begun. Leaving would be tricky – and there’s no need to leave, anyways. Your caution is left forsaken in the face of a quiet brunette who sings her grief, stretching each note a little past its time; an old poet who narrates the story of a mountain; an archaeologist juggling peaches; and, a mountaineer playing bass guitar.

Framed by the hazy autumn hue of fairy lights, this open-mic folds the night into itself. Here, you are somehow less alone in solitude; only the partnered, befriended, travel-in-a-pack attendees must mind their company, make conversation. The solitary need only open their borders and allow proximity. 

You decide to speak too, fill this unfamiliar space with unsure footing, step to the mic and ask if your hair looks alright; a room giggles with you. Tell them something, anything. You settle on a story of the Fringe and Neil Patrick Harris with a rose up his bum, and another story of love existing in tiny, almost insignificant distances, like the one between your 5' 7" (and a half) and a taller 6' date who, with vertical superiority, once swatted away horny men on the dancefloor with a smile.

When finished, you settle back into your corner. You slink into a daze and feel the world unravel, each gasp and giggle inviting a curious return: songs once lost now found, words forgotten miraculously recalled, a memory of the poet Rilke who told you to “go to the limits of your longing” and here — sunset, fairy lights, open-mic, a café in Marchmont — your little longing is, suddenly, immense.