The Ongoing Storm

You're the tail end of a storm, the orange light tinging the clouds, the last echoes of thunder that roll across the skies. Distant and dangerous, beautiful to see but impossible to touch, you leave me with a strange sense of unease, like I just missed something awesome and rare, that you know of and I have no hope of ever experiencing; like the apocalypse is just around the corner and you know all the techniques to survive. 

You are wary, a wild thing with its heart in a cage, because it offers more protection than just your ribs. You hide. You hunger too, raw, bloody, for the things you'd never dare speak, confining them to the cage with your heart so they never get out. But they live in your eyes, in the way your hands curl into fists when you're not thinking. We're mere humans but there's something of the hurricane in you. 

The Exits That We Miss

I have loved many people in this life. But then there is you, with something unreadable behind your eyes, a distance, a void, a mirror which throws back echoes of me. This love is selfish, I know. I want you for me and none else, a single mutual exclusiveness that could snap my soul in two for the power it wields over me. Selfish, yes. 

I cannot have you. In the sordid, rotting core of my heart, nothing is more obvious. It is the poison that creeps through my veins and blurs my vision when I look at you. It is the tug that keeps me insane. If I could bleed it out, I could walk away, I could leave you and this selfish love in a shadow, forgotten and lost to time. 

But...

There is always a but. And this one whispers tales of the look you give me when I look the other way, that I catch the tail end of out of the corner of my eye. It's not longing, it's not love, but it is not the look you give to someone who is merely a friend and nothing more. Is it? Who knows? Only you, and you keep yourself close.

And it doesn't make any sense, this restless endeavour for a cause, a possibility, a hope. Because at the end of the day, you're going to walk away, keeping your silence and the unreadable look behind your eyes. And I'm going to be left with a selfish love and a self that feels nothing but self loathing. 

Norms

Frail wisps of blonde hair ran up the pale legs that poked out from beneath the hem of a skirt the colour of blood. Of all the things I thought in that moment, the one that prevailed was the distraction of the itch in my fingers that wanted to run up her legs and see if they were as soft as they looked. 

Summer Elegies

Beneath the dew caressed leaves, in the warm dappled light of a dying summer, a group of you danced in the air, flitting and fluttering and flirting in and out of the heavy rays of light that filtered through the branches. In humid air you wove a song with the twisting of your wings, a reckless elegy to yellow days beneath the arc of a perfect blue sky, to the height of life, to unbreakable togetherness. Humming, you came close, inviting, and promising renewed life after the winter.

I, little, lost, confused soul, watched from within an enclosed house and beat desperately with my wings to be there with you in your glorious summer dance, but I could not find the cracks in the glass of my window.

Inalienable

 I cannot stop thinking about touching her. Not bare skin against bare skin, chest against chest, though the thought does not escape my mind, but her, close enough to emanate warmth through layers of clothing. My imagination overloads on the ghost of her in my arms, the ridges of her ribs rubbing my forearms, and I cannot envision anything but the palms of my hands against her hips, her head close enough that the scent of her hair is all I can smell. 

And what of the explorations of my fingertips? They shall trace every part of her; the knobs of her spine after she has lost her shirt, the valleys of her ribcage, the downy hairs on her arms. I want to know if she will shiver, if her breathing will hitch and adopt a desperate arrhythmia. My body will have hers, and she mine, and we will lie on the precipice of recognising something inherent and inalienable, human conquistadores in a familiar, unexplored landscape.  

Prison Bus

A smile and a volley of heartbeats. A faded memory folded and kept in a breast pocket. A rattling bus weaving through debris littering a long abandoned road. The grass on the side of the road is tall, wild; anything could lurk there. Anything but you. 

The bus seat is sticky beneath my fingertips, gluing itself to my my t-shirt. I would have followed you across the universe on my knees if your smile had ever meant anything. Instead I took a sparsely packed bag and took the first bus out of town; this bus, where you could get venereal diseases off the seats, and lose everything you have to the guy with a battered cap pulled low over his eyes. And all I have to give are the bruises on my knees that refuse to scrub off and a faded memory that I refuse to show anyone. Because it's the only real thing left. In the light of day, folded out to be seen by everyone, it would be nothing more than another dream of a lost lifetime. 

Alternatives

Inside a crowded imagination, the possibilities were endless. Faces flashed and fanned out before me; people I'd met, or merely passed in the street, people I'd never talked to, and people I wish I had. Girls with coloured streaks in their hair, girls on skateboards on sidewalks. Girls in cafés, girls with books tucked under their arms. Girls blasting music into the atmosphere, points of vivid nose, and girls who barely say a word. Boys with neatly done up collars and suspenders over each shoulder. Boys with big glasses and curly hair and neatly trimmed beards. Boys with tattoos creeping over their skin. 

I thought on these, on the things I was drawn to in people, out of the infinite possibilities. And slowly, without realising I was developing it, I found that I had a type; and the realisation hit me without preemptive warning. A slap in the face, a punch in the gut, the hollow feeling of falling. Because time and time again, it turned out they were all reflections of you. Without knowing it, I was falling for the bits of you I recognised in other people. Two years and a hundred people, and the only person I can think about is you. Inside a crowded imagination, everyone else is just a figment.

Company We Keep

Here, there. Near, far. Distance is the only company we keep. We're back to this shyness that forces us to avert our eyes. But every fibre of me screams to look over, to see if you're pretending not to share the glance too. We entertain ourselves with fancies and longings. We destroy ourselves on the sharp edges of reality. 

You're there, and I'm here. And one of us is in the wrong place.