Hold me tight don't let me breathe, feeling like you won't believe... There's a firefly loose tonight, better catch it before it burns this place down and I lie if I don't feel so right, but the world looks better, through your eyes
- Firefly // Ed Sheeran
This time I am not stealing those words. I am writing my own.
She says I smell like safety and home, I named both of her eyes 'forever' and 'please don't go'. I could be your morning sunrise all the time, all the time yeah. This could be good, this could be good...
- She Keeps Me Warm // Mary Lambert
This isn't a post about love.
This is a post about her arms around me, our hands clasped together; feeling safe, feeling at home. How empty my arms feel now. How right it felt before. Could we not lie there forever?
I can almost remember clearly the day you stepped into my life. I remember knowing you were coming, and looking to see who you were- nothing special, just as I did with everyone. I remember meeting you for the first time, I think; see you clearly yet peripherally, the day we learnt to talk without words.
This isn't a post about love, because we weren't in love the day we danced in the rain, or the times I waited with you on the bus stop.
I wish I could go back, and collect up all the memories; follow them like a garden path, like red ribbon in the forest, right to the start and back again. I do not remember how things happened, what came where. I am fairly sure I am missing out huge chunks of what happened. I cannot remember when we swapped phone numbers, who asked who, what was said.
I search out pictures, looking for my proof- we were here- our footprints traced over the sands of the last few months. I break my own rule not to edit, wanting to get this right. I have never wanted so much to get something right.
Even as the nights got colder we stayed, strong together; where others recoiled, you stuck with me; where others felt I was too much, you only grew nearer.
Are you actually going to burn your bra?!
This is not a post about love, because we were not in love the night we marched, when we walked home through empty streets, just the two of us and the world.
Life gave us lemons, we gave them away, both oblivious even as I endeavored to change schedules, make sure you could be there throughout.
Bright nights, bright lights, skating across the floor- my eyes on
another, then, painfully obvious- but you were distracted too, waiting
for that text back, always waiting.
This is not a post about love, but do others than lovers experience such coincidences? The first time we bought the same thing as a present, it was unintentional. The second time, we said it was 'a thing now'.
Fireworks night, bright explosions across our city, bits of fire in our hands; again, two days later, as you got older. We sang, and ate cake, and even then we did not notice- for how do you notice what is not there? You still wear the ring on the little finger of your right hand; the book was merely because I loved it so.
I have always believed that giving someone a book you love equates to giving them a piece of your self.
This is not a post about love, because spending hours playing cards, drinking tea- they are not reserved for the lovers of this world, not even as I thought someday, we will probably end up together. A wish? A hope?
Even as my world darkened and shook, you were still there. Always, always there.
This was not intended to be a digging up of the past, a walk back through what was. This was not meant to be that at all; and yet that's what it's become. Funny, isn't it? That sometimes things become the least of what we expected?
Days came and passed- see me hurry up my prose now, as life hurried up then. I was stressful, then- one moment this, the other that, full of stories of wrongs. I hid those worst parts from you, and you let me, becoming my safety, my refuge, a place to hide my damaged wings.
Even still, this is not a post about love. Because what lover consoles the other, despairing over situations unknown, over predicaments and troubles of a romantic kind? Not us, for we were not lovers, then, and that was not love.
Was it not?
This is not a post about love, because, defiantly, we were not lovers- just close, closer, close. We were not lovers when the new year came in, and we hid ourselves away, talking and talking without noticing time pass. We were not lovers when I realised that it was only you I wanted to talk about.
We were not lovers then, and this is not a post about love.
Until, suddenly: it became one.
I fell in love the way you fall asleep- slowly, then all at once.
- John Green
I do not know when this became a post about love, much the same as I do not know when our story became one.
Maybe it was there, foreshadowed, from the beginning; in our linked hands the day the rain fell and we danced on, in every single moment I did not think to note.
Who will ever know?
This is a post about love now; about tea, and adventures, and knitting, the things that mean nothing alone, and us together.
This is a post about the way you look when you are concentrating, or laughing; a post solely reserved for your smile, every part of your beautiful self.
This is a post about holding hands, and looking out at the city; about knowing exactly how to make each other smile, and about being comfortable in the quiet.
This is a post about searching and searching, and realising that you were there all along- that of course that's where this was going, because what else would we ever be?
This is a post about searching and searching, and realising that you were there all along- that of course that's where this was going, because what else would we ever be?
This is a post about you; wonderful, magical, indescribable you; lovelier than anything the English alphabet gives me the power to say, far beyond each and every superlative.
This is a post about love.
Maybe it always has been.
Kiss me like you wanna be loved, you wanna be loved, you wanna be loved; this feels like falling in love, falling in love; we're falling in love.
- Kiss Me // Ed Sheeran
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