I like the way Todd draws crosses on his arm with his finger when he’s quiet. I wonder if he knows I can see his lips tremble with his breath, lips that wait slightly parted as I watch him wonder if he’s daring to ask for more.
“The more I know you…” He murmurs. “The more I don’t.”
“You’re the only one to ever know me.”
I believe this is true. If Rochelle were ever as insightful as he is, I could never have known what she saw. But while Todd see’s, he listens. When speaking to him, I feel no lies dance on my lips and
He makes me feel like I I don’t have to hide… Though I do anyway. When with him Im finding safety among all that is already safe, barricaded beneath the surface of walls he scratches at.
“I’m starting to think you might be more the words you don’t say than the ones you do.”
There are these moments where his gaze tells me its the first time he’s seen me in his life… like I was the first thing that he has ever seen in his life. I wonder if I tell him the same without ever meaning to. That I’ve never seen someone like him. How in awe I am of him. All I would admit to him if only I weren’t so cowardly.
You’re all the the words I want to say but cant.
Words I don’t say aloud, I hope he hears them anyway. Todd doesn’t miss much and when I might like him to, he pretends to. I hear him too but unlike the way I hope and wonder he knows all I am too cowardly to say, he knows how to speak to me when he knows I might not want him to. When I tilt my head away, retreating back behind the walls after regretting going out into the open, he tells me that should I cower behind these walls, he will cower with me. Of all the times in my life I’ve found my body crumpling from beneath me, once fallen on my knees he urges me to pray when I had fallen to concede.
I once had courage and what an admirable trait I realise I had only once it’s gone. Even within my own inner monologue, confessing any amount of cowardice is confronting but there was once a time where I loved far too freely, with a carelessness that meant I didn’t even notice I was frolicking in a freshly planted garden of my own demise.
“I Imagine you feel pleased with yourself.”
I had never fallen involve with hazel before I met him and if I had any hope left for me, I might wish for my eyes to be sweet like his, for my own sweetness once sincere and tender has become the kind that rots teeth. In awe of his forest iris, it’s not just his eyes though it could be, they are enough. Yet he offers more, this grace in his movements like moving through his environment is an act of ease. I like the way he is gentle not only to me but to himself. Whether his voice is meant for me, or for the air he murmurs into before he can stop himself, its soft as the tone wades through the room. He utilises phrase with a delicacy that soothes me, the same delicacy in which he loves and lives. It’s never been just his eyes.
He might be right, I’ve always known silence to say more than words and I wonder if my seeking shelter among the noiseless room says more than I’m willing for him to know. Having now said her name aloud, I have to ask if I shared such memories with him or with myself. Either unsettles me in their own degree as I break vows I gave myself - to never again acknowledge such memories since they’v e been lived. I feel a twang of bitterness interrupt Todd’s aura, knowing that some things don’t deserve a second life. Some memories don’t deserve to live forever and memories that can not heal will be forgotten… Yet I’ve fallen shamelessly captive to Todd in a way I hadn’t with Rochelle. Had the sun shone on her she’d hiss until I’d draw a blind. Should I ever ask Todd to leave me in darkness, he would let the beams warm my skin before smiling softly, comfort in his voice as he would say “I’m just trying to let some light in.
I hear his gentle voice ring through my head, but it passes through gently. Todd has never made me feel … Everything I usually feel. I wonder sometimes whether he will make me realise just how much I might regret rotting my youth away in a solitary shaped casket.
His heart has an existence that makes me shameful of my own. Burnt, scarred and flawed, how could I show him all the tar and sludge it holds while hiding behind my rusty breastbone when his is so untainted he might scream at the sight of mine. Of all my fears, the one that incites the fear that keeps you frozen, I am most terrified that should I let him in further than a few measly surface layers, he might see me as I see myself. I don’t look in the mirror any more. For Todd to be unable to look at me when his eyes are the most honest thing I’ve seen in this world? There are some things in life that we as human beings cannot face and Todd has always been the only thing I can.
“What are you thinking about?”
Todd’s favourite question, one he asks often. Like our first meeting, the first time he asked me this I was caught off guard. He must of seen panic in my eyes. He had laughed in good faith at me, explaining how fond he was of such a question. He explained to me that even the briefest of pauses would tell you whether the answer that would follow would be dishonest. He told me he didn’t mind If it were, how it made him all the more curious. I had asked him if he were ever satisfied with an truthful answer. Answering yes, he explained how he admired the bravery that lied within an honest answer and the humour in an honest answer that was as shamefully simple as what one might cook for dinner that night. I like Todd.
“I’m thinking about the time we first met.”
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