#loveverse

While cypress vine technically only lasts one season, its self-seeding ability allows it to regrow year after year without much intervention.

*

The jacket hangs on you, limp, threadbare, a patchwork of days and months teetering into years – years of repeating the same thing again and again expecting something else to change. But you never get used to it.

The seasons change in this place. Thick humidity in the summer, brittle frost in the winter. Yet, despite the stark differences, they all feel the same to you. You always feel cold.

You sit on the back porch, flicking a cigarette between your stiff fingers. The ember flares, dancing close to the worn fabric of your sleeves. The taste burns, and it’s not the same brand Cypress used to smoke. Close, but never close enough. Warm, but never sustaining.

You exhale. The smoke curls-

*

-mixing with your frigid breath in the chilly air. The snow had stopped falling, covering the ground in vast white. You sat, half-submerged in the layer of snow, back pressed against a tree, head heavy. It was cold, relentlessly so. You were used to it.

Cypress found you easily enough. “Dumbass,” he muttered, his breath warm with tobacco. “You’re just gonna sit there and freeze to death?”

You didn’t pull away when he draped his jacket over you, slightly oversized and way bulkier than your own. It smelled of cigarette, of grease, of coal – something real, something worn-in, something his.

(Smelled of death.)

His arm was a solid weight around your shoulders as he lifted you up. You felt the steady rise and fall of his ribcage against you as he grumbled about the cold, about your terrible luck, about how you needed to find a better way to live than this. Despite your cold, he didn’t pull away. And you savored the warmth so rarely given.

It always felt less cold with him around.

*

Cypress vine needs full sun to bloom. It can withstand extreme heats but will quickly wither in cold temperatures.

*

Cypress had always liked booze and cigarettes. Simple vices. Simple indulgences. You both shared the same inclinations for recreation, and it was easy to bond over them.

So many memories. Hazy. Broken. Mismatched.

A laugh here. A voice there.

You remember tilting a bottle of something between you. It was a dare, you think. The burn in your throat was hot, and Cypress’ resounding chuckles rang in your skull accompanied with drags of smoke.

“Fucking lightweight,” he laughed, watching you cough through another shot. “Maybe if you ate more, this shit wouldn’t be so bad on your nonexistent stomach.”

Cypress had always been strange like that, caring about a nobody like you. It made something in you itch – a hunger you hadn’t felt in so long. You never acted upon it, just observing, recording, memorizing everything you could have.

The nights were long, filled with half-thought plans and dreams neither of you fully believed in – or at least you hoped so. Cypress was there, and you let yourself get drunk off more than just the cheap liquor. The warmth, the company – it had all been so intoxicating.

And you realized, he had somehow become another vice of yours.

*

You barely touch alcohol anymore. You miss it, like an itch you cannot scratch, a hunger you cannot sate. Yet, you fear. That if you let the burn flow down your throat, it won’t stay. The warmth will die out too fast, swallowed by the coldness that refuse to go away.

You keep smoking, already pulling out another cigarette to savor right after you finish this one. You keep your eyes forward, looking at the garden that has become the latest passion project of your boss. So many species, and yet there is no cypress vine in this lustrous garden. A shift behind you. A presence. Unspoken but heavy. You don’t turn around. You ignore the burning gaze at the back of your neck. If you speak, if you look back, they’ll drag you back inside. Tell you you’ve had enough.

But it’s never enough.

It will never be.

*

Cypress vine poses a moderate threat of toxicity to humans and some other animals. It is also considered an invasive weed in some regions. If they latch on other plants accidentally, they could overtake them.

Deheading the flowers will prevent seed production and spread.

*

You should have known how this thing would end.

*

“Ya know?” Cypress mused as he looked at your ragged frame one fateful day. It had been a while since you last met. You had been busy with your new situation, and he- You didn’t know what he had been up to. You never knew, but the uncertainty never ate at you like you thought it would. “We should go somewhere warm. A tropical resort. Bet you’d like that.”

You snorted, an ugly sound. “Ia wouldn’t like that.”

“Well, respectfully, fuck them.” He gave you a look that you couldn’t really decipher. His head hang low, the soft candlelit lights in the bar catching the shadows on his face. “What do you want – that’s the only thing that matters here.”

“I don’t care.”

“Uh yeah, you do. You just don’t know yet.”

(You don’t remember how the conversation continued, only memories of affect, slowly melting away through the cracks of your hands. You remember arguing with him. You remember telling him the false reassurances and promises. You remember holding onto his jacket, never relenting your death grip. You remember saying as long as he was here, it didn’t matter where you would go.

You remember your fabulations, your degraded recollection, your shameful wishful thoughts. You don’t remember how this last meal with him went. You’re glad. You’re so glad.)

*

You remember his dust spreading over you, a cold land where the flowers of his namesake will never grow again.

*

Summer without you is as cold as winter. Winter without you is even colder.

- Lemony Snicket