the couple at Waterloo station

He took her hand and they strode onto the escalators, so confident and sure - so in love, so hopelessly in love. On the escalators they held hands and their burning fingers intertwined like interlacing stories, hands crumpled together like the discarded pages of lost books.

He swooped a printed kiss onto her open face, like a word of tenderness scribbled on the page of a notebook. Here. Now. They were writing their own histories, unfolding them in the damp grey morning at Waterloo station, London. There had been lovers before them, and there would be lovers after them, and in some ways they were no different. They were simply another couple on the platform stage, acting out their roles.

And yet: there would be no two people who kissed like this ever again, who looked like this ever again, who felt the same rush of love and pain. On the surface, they were the same as any young couple have ever been; yet they were also two lovers unlike any others, experiencing emotions so new, the world had no words to describe them. For all the critics and their cynicism, for all the linguists and their poems, the English language cannot adequately express love. It cannot reflect feelings in the way that lovers' faces do – in the way that his face did in that moment to hers, in the way that it shone.