“I feel it in the roots of my being, when you laugh like that. For once, it feels like I can breathe this air thick with pretense and my lungs won’t collapse. The very sound of it writhes my soul and frees it of its malignity”. I finished with the kind of contentment you feel when you’re standing with closed eyes and flowing hair on the edge of all you’ve known and you’re ready to unlearn it all. She looked up, her curled eyelashes like the rays of the sun kissed the outline of her brows and it was like God pulled away the curtains to marvel at his creation that is the universe. Slowly, the cusps of her mouth rose and she, for the first time, smiled like a child does after a round of applause on narrating a rhyme : slowly, and breaking through, opening the chambers of your heart to winds you’ve only felt in your dreams, winds that gush in and yet never seem to fill you up wholly. The mad winds, born from the ringlets of rebellion and painted in an infinity the universe has yet to measure. We rested our bodies on my bed, tired of confronting sullen-eyed people who suck all the flavor out of life and then weep at its hollowness. The chaotic calm in her poise, spine glistening like a knight’s sword moments before it slays the dragon, the magnificence of it all brings destruction to my soul while her slender fingers try to sew the ripped edges of me. I laid back, her lower back my pillow, my raven hair tickling her bare skin, lights of the night dancing in our eyes. In simple words, she was the air, for the air is never fettered by anything, and I felt her slender fingers clutch my heart and breathe life into it when it cradled on a hammock of old letters the words of which evanesce like the kisses she plants on my skin. I liked to weep at her feet, and then collect my tears and decorate her hair with them; she wore them like her own and they always looked better on her. She came when the clouds threatened never to cry again and left when the sun sat on my shoulders and burnt me like her fire never could, and on those days I sleep with her name rolled up in my tongue. Claire. The shadows where my soul can breathe better than in broad daylight. - @shreyawrites
