In the peace of an hour in which I know nobody will reach me, I finally take a breath and open the stiff window lock. Cold shocks of air spill into the uncomfortable warmth of my leisurely apathy and crinkled sheets. Tendrils of air swing open and shut my bedroom door at a gentle rhythm. Everything peaceful and calm about these forgotten hours wash over me again and again with every heartbeat of the demanding wind. Every freezing gust and patch of exposed skin are soft against the harsh cushion of a suffocating night in bed. So I feel the need to write and the realisation of that need washes over me like a memory; silver and haunting in the echo of an old love. Keys tap to the rhythm of late footsteps outside, rushing home with one gaze in five cast carefully over one shoulder then another. Each sentence drowns me and pulls me with unbreakable force to particular times that have passed since my last meeting with the forgotten hours.
I can’t help but think of the loud noise in my head, the smooth symphony of something so real in the mind filled up with fanciful embellishments and overactive ‘what-ifs’. It is the softness of something that feels so real that there should be no question about it. No two ways to interpret the hands in my hair and the mouth on mine. It is a sweet welcome to one so entrenched in their own mind, I wonder whether he bears me any thought in his busy mind. I am foolish to my friends who assure me it is ordinary and I know if anything is as it should be then he would lose interest and find it wholly uncomfortable that I should ever record the events at all. But I still hold hope in my hands so small I dane not expose it to the rough winds of casual conversation. Doubt on the tip of my tongue and hope in the shadows of the words that are hung there.
It was real in a way that nothing else is real and since then I have craved that reality more than anything. Soft lips pressed hard in good feeling and pleasure, teeth graze lips and hands move us helplessly closer. The sentiment of being right or good was lost and suddenly this was all I’d ever known. The closeness of the hands in my hair and my arms slung around his neck, barely conscious of anything or anyone but the little space between us, though only to wish it gone.
Each moment, madness seems more plausible and much less tangible. I realise that I am so afraid of time and clarity escaping me. My thoughts are hurricanes and brushstrokes, never made by the clock and only in the sweetness of ignorance for the ticking and the lists going on and on for an arbitrary goal and a life one hundred others could live. The wim and moment calls like rocks in high tide, begging to my ruin and promising only a precarious visage of contentment. Looking out I see that time does pass and other people do jump. Because, as I forget, this is not my private choice but a very public affair. It is typed out in books that curious hands will wander to find in time, in their time. Whilst I watch mine drip sweetly down, melting into obscurity and the ruin of my clarity. Every other person likes to think they can be great and that they could change the world, I'd like that to be true. But- time ticks and you fade. Those two brilliantly inescapable things will push me off that cliff, because God what could be worse than this.
it is terrible on my mind and unthinkable written down,
but somehow i can't help but hope
that my lips could pour affection
over anything but my own reflection.
the terrible feeling,
i don't even know if you feel it,
could bring you to an adrenaline rush,
to reckless affection,
to something new and familiar.
blank spaces are boring,
fill them with quick words
that will never undo.
warm breath,
instead of reaching echoes.
satiate the world spinning
hollow in my chest,
let me breathe a sigh
of something other than despair.
it's a terrible mess
but i'd like you to see.
6 very short stories about 6 types of love, based off (x)
~*~
Eros
a passionate physical and emotional love based on aesthetic enjoyment; stereotype of romantic love
~
You are so beautiful, sometimes I forget where I am in the world with you. There is something in the depth and electricity of you. It washes over me and you are so beautiful.
In the very early morning, I can feel my heart lurch. With your hands around my waist I can melt to your touch. Dragging your hands across me, trails of gold in your wake.
~
//
Ludus
a love that is played as a game or sport; conquest; may have multiple partners at once
~
I run my fingers along his collarbones, making sure you can see. You pretend not to look but I catch your eye as you whisper into a girl’s ear about something that widened her eyes, and encouraged her hand to trace down your torso.
Call your bluff and I’ll call mine. The boy beside me presses himself into my hips, but all I can smell is whiskey and stale cologne. You grimace slightly when she bites down too hard on your lip and think I can’t see.
~
//
Storge
an affectionate love that slowly develops from friendship, based on similarity
~
Every evening we’d sit and drink coffee, talking about our days, everything and anything that came into our heads. I’d try and teach you how to play the piano, watching your hands pad hesitantly over the ivory keys. I’d hear sighs of frustration and fractured tunes every so often. You fill my heart with a strange affection.
One day you grinned at me after playing the right keys and I couldn’t look away from your mouth. You blushed and looked down as your hands echoed mine across the black and white, whilst we were anything but.
~
//
Pragma
love that is driven by the head, not the heart
~
You and I watch the same films and eat the same food. Reason ran through my veins and surged in my heart. We’d sit for hours watching films and doting over new dreams. My love for you grew from logic into something much more terrifying.
We’d get the train home from work together and laugh at miserable businessmen. It made sense to move in together, out of convenience.
Eventually convenience was waking up in your arms because the heating didn’t come on in time, it was sharing a bed because your room was closer to the lounge, sharing a shower to save water.
~
//
Mania
obsessive love; experience great emotional highs and lows; very possessive and often jealous lovers
~
I try to sit still, I try and be complacent and content, but you consume my mind. I saw the girl looking at you across the supermarket and gripped your hand tighter. Every second your name is on my lips and there is power. You are electric on my tongue and poison in my head.
I think about it in a daze, fingernails digging into my palm, they draw blood but I can’t feel it. You are my drug, I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine when you walk by and smile. But what I need is you, forever, with me. I can’t eat because you are all I want on my tongue, I won’t sleep because you might need me eventually.
~
//
Agape
selfless altruistic love; spiritual
~
If you’re cold, I’ll set myself alight for you. Your soul is priceless and everyone should see you my dear. I’ll scream your name from the top of the world to see you smile. You are truly underrated and endlessly fascinating.
I’m hasty and quick but you’re calm and brave. When the world falls down around you I’ll be here to pick up the pieces. When you remember old friends long gone, and how cruel the universe can be, I would give up my forevers for you.
I remember our first texts- we were never sure how to sign them off so it started to become ‘until tomorrow’. It was too formal and you cringed every time you said it in real life, but I loved it anyway.
‘(03:14am) Received;
i don’t know how to finish our texts, i don’t want them to finish :(’
‘(03:16am) Sent;
they won’t finish- only until tomorrow.’
Countless evenings we would sit together on the sofa- you’d smile and I swear to god the entire room fell away. It was so beautiful and elegant, everything you insisted you never were but always were.
The shadow behind your eyes was dull and tired and you’d never show it- you’d smile and laugh and touch my skin. Oh god, you made me live.
Then your face would fall and you’d shake your head- you’d insist you were fine until I drove you crazy with asking. Then you’d admit that you were worrying, like you always were.
“I’m gonna get old.”
“You will, and so will I.”
“Why do you sound so at peace with it?”
“Because if I can help it, and everything goes to plan- we’re gonna get older together. I promise.”
You’d sit back and smile to yourself- pressing against me and keeping me on earth. We’d laugh about how you thought we were a devil and angel- perching on the universe’s shoulder we accidentally fell in love, found our place in the world, fought the universe- together.
I held you up when you fell from the clouds into reality, I told you that your sentimental heart will never feel if cynicism is all you preach. Because nobody realised that you’d buy yourself flowers, and buy us both cakes from the bakery in town- you fell in love with our pocket in the universe. You loved it more than you loved yourself- but flowers masked that and you muttered forgiveness at every turn.
And every book you’d give up just before the end- until you couldn’t bear not to know. Because, you told me, you hate endings.
‘Until tomorrow’. You promised me. You’d read the ending tomorrow and start to love yourself tomorrow.
Still we ended every text with ‘until tomorrow’. Even when ‘I love you’ had fallen into our laps one million times over, ‘until tomorrow’ was all you ever begged of me- because you hated to ask things of others.
You would always talk about the future, and swear we would never end. I left to go on holiday with my family and you made me promise, ‘until tomorrow’.
Every year I promised we’d get out- and eventually we lived, we did. You got out, you told me. Because I remember you still, as the boy desperate to get out, to live and be better. And, god- you got out. You got me out and we ran into our sunset.
Our future was soon the present, waking up with you in my arms was better than any fucking sunset. Even running into the shadows with you was a pleasure, because you knew your way around them.
Soon the sun was set and heat was drawn from your blood. Suddenly the mutterings became sobs and you’d shut me out. Every few weeks you’d come home like that until you finally told me how your body couldn’t keep up- how everything was ending for you.
We sat together and cried. We cried for every conversation we would never have, for our family of two that would never grow, for our wedding we were running out of time to plan.
And you would still buy flowers, you told me it kept you sane. The bakery staff started to learn your name, instead of just thinking of you as the boy who looked too weak to have such fire in his smile. Because it was the painful irony that you woke up smiling, every time you caught my eye it would break again.
You would break into a smile and fight through the light- nodding and smiling, because you hated to ask things of others.
Still every week you’d go to the hospital, it was where you’d disappeared off to- but now you brought me along. You told me that you hated to see me here, that it brought his bitter reality to our pocket in the universe.
Finally you gave in, when you had no other choice- I wandered out to buy the flowers, to make small talk with the bakery staff. You hated to ask things of others but eventually you had no choice.
At night, when you used to be awake and your mind would race- you would now sit dead eyed. Sometimes you chatted at a million miles an hour about everything you loved, sometimes you just chatted about me. I didn’t mind because I knew it was keeping you from the shadows, because even when your hands would shake- you would smile at me when I brought you flowers.
One evening we argued horribly about something I can’t remember- you looked at me with such contempt and it was the only time I ever questioned whether you still loved me. When you were sobbing and smashing plates- I asked why you were crying because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“You promised.” Is all you told me, in a voice so quiet that I barely heard you. You never forgot anything, because of your damn sentimental heart- no matter how much you hated it, you still saved every cinema receipt from when we used to go together.
“You promised that we’d grow old together.”
I opened my mouth to talk, but instead grabbed the plate from your hands and threw it to the floor.
Neither of us slept that night- we walked around our flat, the one we’d made our name in. Where you’d fallen in love with the world again.
The hospital staff forbade outside food, but I brought the cakes anyway. I sat beside you on the bed and we laughed about the last time you were in hospital, numb from morphine and I smuggled in McDonalds.
I saw you lose everything you once had the will to fight for. Even your smile was a losing battle when every night you would sit over the toilet, vomiting, shaking, and crying out for some sort of horrible mercy.
It made me sick to my stomach, so sick I felt selfish. You wouldn’t let me sleep in the hospital with you because you didn’t want it to feel like home, so as I left each evening I promised; ‘until tomorrow’.
Everyone sent cards but you forbade flowers eventually- you told me that this wasn’t how you wanted to remember the universe, the universe that we’d fought together.
I don’t remember the last time you visited our apartment, I don’t remember seeing you there and knowing it was for the last time. But, I do remember going into your room- the one that we kept for no reason other than laziness.
I stepped in and realised that our future together was history. Our great escape was over and your number up, because in your room- the one that felt like a shadow to stand in- I realised that you were so wonderful in life and so awful in death. You didn’t look beautiful and it wasn’t enlightening standing there.
It felt like decay because there was still a half-empty glass of water and the bed was unmade.
That was the first time I cried alone- I felt so empty in the last week. You never finished all those books, I don’t think you ever learned to love yourself.
The last day I came in holding a bouquet of roses, you could barely smile at me. I held your hand and filled the vase beside the bed with fresh water and the last roses. Of course, I didn’t know they would be the last- but I’ve never liked the smell much since then.
Since the day that I broke my final promise, the day I whispered ‘until tomorrow’.
and i can’t stop my head spinning anymore.
it’s out of control and i want to scream but
my lungs are full of answers that i don’t
want to hear, so i stay silent. like poison in my veins
it’s so quick to take hold, where power and drive
was there’s only a yearning heart, now.
fuck if this is what destroys me,
fuck if i can’t get past this.
it’s hell itself to choose between two unattainable
things that make your heart swell.
one can be safe and beckon you to comfort,
the other throws you forward with whiplash and sparks.
one could hold the other if the rest of my head
wasn’t so damned occupied with shadows and secrets
from being on my own. so will they fester if i don’t try?
will they build up and consume my brain until
i’m there on the rooftop screaming
why does no one love me. i know the answer,
i know it back to front and spoken in any language,
because the voices in my head have no tongue but my own.
if deserving better means never finding it,
is anyone ever anything else than alone?
hands hold you steady, but i shake when i write.
which is better the sleep or the fight?
