#creatureships

James didn't understand. It's been a month since he's received news from Aleks. He's tried calling him many times, but the Russian man simply wouldn't pick up. He didn't understand why the brunet had up and left the Creature group with no warning, whatsoever. Perhaps some family problems were troubling him and he hadn't had the time to give them a call?

Just remembering the huffy sighs and half-assed glares brings a smile to the man’s face. Then the phone vibrates.

An unknown number lights up the screen and brings shadows along the man’s face, almost emphasizing the deep frown weighing upon him. He doesn’t bother reading them anymore. Not since two weeks ago when he first read them.

There’s a note in his hand, wrinkled and smeared. If any outsider were to see the paper itself, they would see the worn wrinkles that come from the constant crumple of the writer’s sweaty palms, as if he could not stop rereading his mind and then folding it back into its square. If anyone were see the outline from afar, they would notice how the sentences began to scrawl away from the lines, as if the writer had a hard time putting his thoughts together.

If any person, whether it was a stranger or the intended receiver, were to read the letter, maybe they could feel the heartbreak in the runny ink, the betrayal and love twisting in long words that come from growing resentment and a suppressed guilty conscious. But, where does it come from? Who bore the most guilt in the writer’s thoughts?

The man who slept soundly in his hidden infidelity, or the other who felt that it was his fault that he wasn’t good enough to love?

If the intended reader were to see the clutched letter, maybe then would he feel something for the man and understand. Maybe he would ask for bittersweet forgiveness to comfort the guilt that must have lingered in the back of his head when he leaves during the night. Maybe he would delete and block the mysterious number in his phone, and crawl back into their couch where they once held each other’s body in an embrace, the kind that warmed the mind and heart.

There were so many maybes, so many possibilities that could from this confession and confrontation.

So, instead, the writer tears the letter into the pieces and throws it into the trash.

He was tired. So very, very tired.

He stands up with heavy shoulders and infinite saddened sighs. His eyes lingered on the side of the bed where the person he loved dearly slumbered and dreamed. Wonderment of ‘what ifs’ and ‘maybes’ tossed around in his lonely thoughts, and that is when he decided it was best to leave without a spoken word.

Without a sound is the ideal plan, but not without the last touch of affection. He could not resist as his lips pressed against the dreamer’s forehead; he could not resist gently slipping his fingers through the soft, messy hair one last time.