mly · 魅力

She is not blind to the way you stir when she passes by.

The leaning, the yearning, the anger, the fall.

The continuous trying, the crying. The mouthful begging, the praying.

One day you detest, the next you worship.

Oh, how she filled you with euphoria, yes, the sickening high of it all—being engulfed in her awe is joy, her poison-laced promises your air.

But alas!

You are a martyr in the making! A devotee of a memory!

For if not for the good, imagine how terrifyingly bland the hatred must taste. Imagine how blunt the shard must bite, how pale the burn must seem.

Attached to the hips of that woman, you scream mercy at her feigned indifference, "Who are you to kill a man? Who are you?!"

The words do not land the way you want them to. She flinches as if dragged through thorns.

God did not answer you either.

She did.

My wife, home is no longer mine to seek.

I am bound by duty, not conscience. My honor is in obedience, not doubt.

If the crown decrees my blood be the tithe, by my iron sword I shall carve my own.

Please. I beg of you, my lady.

Do better than your fool of a husband. Do not save your gentle words for this beast.

I no longer wish to return to you, not like this.

If this war does not claim me, winter will finish what it spares.

This loyalty is the last pulse in the corpse of the man I once was; this loyalty is my redemption.

I shall not abandon my king to die alone.

Come home, my knight.

I have been waiting for you like a rock without its ridges. Attached to whatever grows on me—flowers, trees, dust, soil.

The ravens have been sending me letters; the earth does not quarrel with men.

Take flight, my love, flee.

Before your rotting corpse is taken for the dogs, before the maggots feed on what is left of the loyal.

The man is a conqueror; he is no king.

He left you an orphan, he will leave you bereaved.

No war would be fought for your honor. Not one banner would be raised in your name.

You, poor discarded swordsman. You, another tragedy amidst the thousands.

Before being one, I was so many it would make your head spin.

A servant so brilliant from the land of a thousand creatures.

A lone mercenary in despair of the inevitable survivor's guilt.

I am the flesh that sits in this ring, in this gown, in this bed; drawing short breaths, if God wills it.

Sometimes I am a drunken fool. Sometimes I redeem the sins of many with a prayer.

I have died by a rich man's knife. I have been none the wiser—a madman or a reaper of sorts.

My half does not indulge in the pleasures of this life. We have very little in common, her and I. Our appearance has little match, although neither of us could be considered unattractive.

She's simple, agreeable, good.

As I say those as insults, it is what marks such a disparity between the creators and I, because it is precisely why they wake her, not me.

I disagree that we are products of experience. I'd change this saying to agree with memories instead.

But memories are malleable; they are flawed.

Emotions ruin reality and the same experience may taint a memory unrecognizable.

I remember that day all too well.

The ground was a particular blend of wood and rocks, uneven and particularly difficult on the sole.

It brought a grim look to our tale. No lights left behind those raised, rounded headlamps.

My dearest, Edith.

Before the day is done, you will be a pile of gears and bolts. You will have ceased to exist, your memory will fade in unwritten stories.

But oh, what miles we ran together. I’m at peace, I’m fulfilled.

It is unfair that I needed an outlet just to contain myself whenever I think of you, that I needed to write you love poems while you were asleep.

But when loving you comes so naturally easy, nothing that has to do with you is truly ever a chore.

I wish you could understand just an ounce of how much you mean to me. Thinking of you keeps me awake, dreaming of you keeps me asleep. being with you keeps me alive.

Oh, do not get me started on how perfect you look. I will sit here and write tirelessly. I just knew I wanted to see that smile for the rest of my life the first time I saw it.

I would run through life again, and repeat every single mistake, so long as it takes me back to you. I will choose you, and find you; in a hundred different lifetimes and a hundred version of worlds.

I crave your love, I see your inner sincerity. Your body is mine, your suffering I feel in my marrow. any hurt of yours, minute or immense, I will see, and I will comfort you.

I am a creature of hope. I see what my mind screams with joyful mania, but with you? Everything is at peace. Some hearts understand each other even in silence. And you must remember this: for my love for you is higher than words.

I'll lay with you forever if I could. and I'll hold you dear and near until we fall asleep. Time spent with you feels so full, and good, and necessary. I want to love you loudly, and then quiet again just between us.

With you, I understood why love and anger are painted with the same color. So my love, forgive me for my impatience, for everything about you I feel so strongly about.

Yet despite it all, you still hold me, and kiss me. you make sure I am cared for, seen, and loved. Your love breaks me to tears, but heals my heart completely.

No matter how indecisive I may be with little things, honey, I want you to know,

that I am certain of you. and you can be certain of that.

This empty space in my heart, the one that fits you perfectly. That blissful place is yours to stay.

Until the sun sets in the east. Until the sky finally falls.

If you asked me how much I love you, how could I ever answer that? Just the thought of a life without you, makes my world pause in its orbit.

I promise, if anyone asks me about love, I'll tell them about you.

The curious thing about a person who prides herself on her frigidity is that there is always going to be someone who wants to break that pride.

The slightest change can disturb her routine, the comfort. Catalyst destruction makes a change so great.

You were nothing to me.

I was in a coma, in a lethargy against my will. Maybe I blink sometimes, but I do not see it as enough.

I just decided to stop.

I sought for you.

You are in everything after summer and my everything ever since.

I wondered if I had formidable lives in the past. I wondered if you were a part of them at all.

A fleeting hope ran at my first breath.

If past lives exist, I hope there is at least one where you return home to me and tell me about your day.

If past lives exist, I hope there is at least one where we shower with promises and the same eyes that fell in love with one another.

If past lives exist, I hope loving you comes as easy as instinct, and that replacing you would only be a nightmare in a thunderstorm.

But nevermind that.

I've been so deep in thought that I forgot fate writes itself.

In this lifetime, you are mine.

One leads to two.

Two leads to five.

Five leads to hundreds.

I idealized the idea to an unhealthy level. I adored collections of pictures, words—having read them at every sober moment like a litany.

Perhaps my obsession was why it found me quite easily, why it sought me way more than it did him. I learned that the secret lies with the tongue.

You press, but you do not kiss.

I began to understand why my mother had always reminded me not to amuse myself with it. I began to understand why men are so ravenous for a taste. I do not blame them any longer:

For I have tasted love by the calm, by the gentle.

Oh, to be told that delight fills your lungs, that blood rushes through your mind, just at the thought of talking to me. To be told that you had seen life in mundane black and white, and that I have somehow given you your colors back.

My beloved jinx, for the hundredth time, I tell you again that I love you.

You might say my worst tragedy is related to the normality of my downfall.

A fever.

How come a fever gets the best of me if not for you?

Here comes the rain, steady but soft, trickling its way down my skin. And though I am soon wet, when it thunders, I hear your name.

So I stand a little longer.

Will you play me a hymn that of the earth and the sky? One of a lavender and of a star? It hurts in the sweetest of ways. I can almost feel your warmth that I have never met before.

You won't exist here and now, no matter how much I pray.

But pray I still do.

Silent rage is easy to manage.

The imagery not so improbable. Carve but sheath your sharp tongue. Recite your lines, recite your story. Forget that you are flesh dynamite; for one wrong move would decimate everything.

Twist your pen for every ire, click your hair for every sin.

Forgive me.

One twist, one click. Two twists, two clicks.

Do tremble, do not implode. You may turn to your fellow man and wish to bash his head in, but stand afterwards—collect yourself. You need not stoop to his lowly extent. Let the boy gawk his untruth, let it spread like wildfire.

Put down your pen, let go of your hair.

I need only you to believe in me.

There's not much to say really, or maybe there is.

A pinch of guilt had me looking away, I must not be selfish. Control yourself, control yourself. Breathe in but hold, do not let go.

My coat was white, was my heart ever red? If I am to wash it, will I find it beating still?

I am grounded, less insane. You sat there, indifferent; while the air was ripped out of my lungs. In place was need—need for time, need for chances.

Snap out of it! my voice screams. I do not doubt that this is going to hurt. Fate has never been necessarily good to me.

Yet knowing you was not a coincidence. It was not luck. If knowing you was fate then perhaps, perhaps I can learn to forgive it.

"In June 2019, when the manuscript of this book was finished, the termination of UK membership of the EU was still not certain,"

"Brexit?"

"Yeah," I look up, seeing my composition on display. My face on the cover of the rich and dark liquid, mixed with a little bit of creamy oat foam. Hers reflects on jet black.

She sat on the chair, took the pipe, and lit it. The smoke roughed down her throat. She coughed the first few inhale but soon her chest compresses.

I had not seen her for eight full moons. The reality pushing on my abdomen painfully, a flick to shoo the fog reaffirms it.

Her change in demeanor and interest, I was unaware. Or maybe I was not, but running from the revelation was in my nature.

I close my eyes and when I open them, she is still lost in the reek. I blink and I hear another cough ahead of me.

Her head hangs low, enveloped in grey breath. I gather my books and walk away. I do not look back.

I was promised a friend.

My head hammers behind the wall of the kitchen, my heart aches like a widow’s. I have just done something that I would have called cowardice five years ago. 

I am an absolute hypocrite. I do not want to be a hypocrite.

I am terrified of admitting I need help, horrified at the thought actually. But the silence was so dense, I could feel shadows wrapping around my neck.

I am drowning in my sea of tears, calling for someone to fix me.

Do not resume laughing between your two breaths. You frighten me.

“It is extremely brave of you to come here today,” —Is it? 

“Everything said will be confidential,” —Will it?

The chair at the end of the table was never empty. You did not laugh deliriously.