#recured

It's going to suck when you eventually hurt me," she muses, eyes flickering up from her coffee mug for the briefest of moments.  He had been deep in thought, plucking at a loose thread on the sleeve of his sweater. His fashion was important to him, far more important, and yet this had caught him off guard.  He tilts his round chin up, a gesture imploring her to further divulge.  His thumb and forefinger are stationed quite firmly around the thread. "What makes you think I’m going to hurt you?"  Her smile is a little sadder than usual, because he already is. He cares for her in a way, and at least she can see that, there is no mistaking that she can. His eyes, those eyes, glacial eyes with far more depth than her own, are so sharp. She hides hers behind tricky black eyeliner, and his can throw daggers. Hers are her grandfather's eyes. Greyed out and unfamiliar, because he and she had never met, like a locked playable character or an evicted gameshow contestant.  Hiding, always hiding, and today hers are far sadder.  "I can see it." she sips her brew. "You aren’t invested," she shrugs, then.  He remains quiet and her shoulders relax. She sits flush against the wooden back of the coffee shop bench; the coffee shop with the lewd, punny name he'd been the one to introduce her to. The one he had made the most subtle, flirtatious double entendres with, each of which were so deliciously clever at the time that the volume of his words alone had made her skin prick.  "Not like me, at least." She drinks again, finishing her cap.  "You like me," her thumb languidly distorts the trace 0f copper lipstick and soy foam on the the rim of the mug, "but you’ll leave."  If his eyes were a nail polish, they would now be a child's play set matte blue. His irises had softened, though she had always thought there was something quite childlike about him as it was. "Look me in the eye and tell me you won’t."  He thanks the barista who takes their mugs and leaves their hands too afraid to touch with nothing else to do. Her eyes are much, much sadder than usual, because she knows that he knows that she really loves him, far more than he has allowed himself to love this time.   "Mm," she purses her lips and it sounds like a diagnosis. "You can't." She reaches across and deftly severs the thread on his sleeve with the tip of her nail like the blade on his upper arm. She presses her finger to her tongue and then pats down the hem as if it was never even there. After all this time, touching him still gets her a little high.  "You’re a thinker, not a liar," the corner of her lip twitches upwards for a second. She is no longer inclined to pretend she isn't tired.  "You won’t lie to me about it, you’ll just disappear and you won’t say a word."  Her voice cracks and it might have even been a little comical if she would only stop feeling so much. It wouldn't be the first time.  He never says a word.  She knows they are fading, childlike, innocent love.   The boy is pale and rather small and soft, even as he refines and grinds his edges and takes care in his clothes as to seem like a gentleman. Even while he plays with engines and vintage cars like his father and tries not to lie as men do. After all, children are devilish and quick witted and brutally honest, and he has always tried to be. She imagines he could skip carefree in the playground over the same pink rope he would later try to choke her with.  "It's simple, really," head tilt, sigh, averted eyes, "you don’t believe in closure." She loops the severed thread around her pinky, her flesh whitening and bulging at the tip, and all at once she is far too aware of every fibre, in the air and digging into her finger, afraid to let go.  "You don’t believe in me the same way I believe in you."

See, this is where I falter. I so never wanted to think of you as an unkind person, but I’ve fallen out of my lightness and haze and my inordinate heart is caught in a perpetual drop. Still, I trivialise my own distress and in your own time allow you to do so too. You told me you valued unwavering honesty and so I thought of you as just like me, but then you proceeded to blow your smoke into my lungs and so I spluttered through my feelings for you. I am lowering myself, see, and I am falling alongside your ash. Both disgusting and discarded I guess you could say, only, I was sleepy and smelled like lavender and tasted infinitely better, you have to admit. You did not let me down as easily as this so much as you abruptly unhinged my fingers, white at the knuckles, from the ledge. And I had already been teetering. Still, I suppose inanimate intimacy was a more appealing choice when the prospect of me sounded off key and you were afraid. But, maybe I’m just bitter. Maybe I’m just tired of seeing all of the people I have loved exist so easily far above me, and I am so sickened by the head rush. After some time it seemed like the blood which had been spiralling in circles around my body at high velocity only ran hot for you while you pressed between my legs, but, see, you didn’t even want to fuck. So, again, this is where I falter. I could have sworn I smelled it on your breath, but at the same time you were far too sweet. I might have even mistaken your shaking and whimpers for bliss over fear of me, as if that wasn’t what you had intended by your firm plans and planted hands on my body, head tilted back. I wanted you to invade me so completely you’d have filled even the ridges in my fingerprints, and you would be lying if you said you didn’t want it again, too. But, see, I too was terrified and unlike you those moans could not lie. You wrapped yourself around me like smoke and your hands around my throat. You told me I was dangerous to your health but you were happy about it, and now I am excusing myself for getting it all wrong. Still, cigarettes are twice a risk, less complex and completely unable to move underneath you as deliciously as I could, wouldn’t you say. I still don’t think of you as an unkind person, but after pitching myself down for and to you over a number of months I have crashed and cracked myself onto the concrete in a mess of blood and bones and rawness, a physical embodiment of my own shortcomings laid out like the artsy pictures you take of the things you like to play. See, in your silence I have had some time to think about it, and maybe I would apologise for loving you in such a disgusting way but I think this time is yours. Your scent has changed, you know, and maybe if I paid more attention I would have noted it then, but I was too focused on tripping over the static electricity on your lips.  Maybe I am just bitter, and I say this like it is a fact. It could be that the infinite drop has me too dizzy to coordinate the obscurity that was us, and this is something to consider as I rotate myself mid air for a better view of your perfect hands and think about fucking to your favourite songs. You edged ever closer to losing your footing, if you were not aware, but you were too busy recovering from the withdrawals of inhaling somebody else to notice the full potential of the plunge. Maybe if I were smaller, more fine tuned and less blue with a clearer sound, hourglass figure and tighter strings tethering me to the edge, I like to think I could have fallen into instead of over you. But, see, this is where I faltered.

Reading in the dark Freckles tentatively kissed Stories on my lips //  My bed is lava Incinerating blue eyes You are dangerous