We were just a goddamn phrase.
We were not a subject and a predicate. We did not have the subject-verb agreement like all the other sentences. We were either both a confused subject, or both a lengthy predicate. And that was the thing: we never made sense. We didn’t have to know that from the people around us, we both knew it: we were doomed from the start. But we still continued, didn’t we? We still existed.
People could never figure us out. Never. What is it about the subject? Where’s the direct object? Who is this description referring to? We would laugh about their monotone way of reading whenever they tried to read us. It didn’t have the usual upscale tone from the questions or the panicked faces that came with exclamations. Or even just the mere certainty of sentences ending in dots. We didn’t care. Let them read if they wanted to read, we said.
“It’s a phrase, stop trying to figure it out, it’s just that, a phrase does not mean anything,” they would dismiss us. We were a phrase, we were not a complete thought. People told us that all the time that it has become a solid humming to our dazed ears.
But that was the thing. The humming finally reached my ears close enough for me to make out the words.
We co-existed, and your words danced with mine and we were together. But we didn’t mean anything. And the funny thing is, we didn’t have the need to mean anything. YOU didn’t have the need to MAKE it mean something, or well, anything. Because we were a phrase right? And this was all just a phase? Phrases didn’t have any meaning. You took that in stride.
I wanted FOR us to have something TO us. I wanted us to mean something. I wanted it to be complete, I wanted us to be in the way I type these words right now: certain, vowed, inked, permanent. With a dot.
The thing with sentences is they’re a done deal. And no matter how much I wanted us to be together for certain, we were only a goddamn phrase:
other people you me other people
We didn’t have dots in us, and that was the problem. Other people could be added on both ends. We were a goddamn extended line. And I wanted us to be a segment. I wanted boundaries. I wanted to be a sentence with you.
That never happened. That may still happen. Who knows?
It could mean we will never get our story, or it could just mean that our story is just taking a longer time to be written, or maybe this was all there was to the story. I can imagine the tv reports: a person, 16, starts a fire in another human being but I am afraid to say that they cannot be together or they could become a natural calamity for all the others around them. Maybe, the story stops here. I do not know when the beginning started, or if this is the end, all I do know is that everyday with you has been my climax. There is no rising or falling action to you, you keep me on my toes, you are my rollercoaster on your own. Maybe we aren’t even supposed to be a story, just a prelude. Maybe all we were supposed to be was a phrase.
But you know what? I am terribly lucky to be even in the same line as you, so really, it has been a pleasure being a phrase with you, even if people couldn’t figure us out, even if they couldn’t understand. All we really needed was the comfort that even without the usual capitalizations or norms, even if we were just a phrase, we could stand on our own without anything or anybody else.
We were just a goddamn phrase. We didn’t make sense, but we didn’t have to, to fall in love.
stormborns
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