Although the months of June and July were overcast and grey, it didn’t matter in the slightest. His presence was enough sunshine to burn through London’s hazy skyline. With him, life became a perpetual summer: the days were long and tasted sweet. Life was fanciful, and brilliant, and every moment could have been projected from a scriptwriter’s imagination.
I feel as if things will forever be left in this continuous time gap; this half-way house between conscious and unconscious worlds, where I don’t know whether words fell on deaf ears, or entered the final beats of your heart. And now that I don’t know whether God exists, I don’t know whether you still do too. I can’t find you in a night sky or in the closed walls of my wardrobe, and I don’t want it to be that way. I don’t want you to be an unfinished memory in a faded photograph. I don’t want you to be that snapshot of bandages and tubes and a forgotten phone call. I want to remember the sound of your voice and the brown in your eyes and the ability to drive to your house. I want you to have air in your lungs.
It’s these kind of days that I live for- the days where the spaces between seconds stretch until infinity feels like something tangible; when the world is golden and pure and nothing exists outside of this moment. When we shout at the sky for clouds taking away our precious sunshine; when our senseless chatter flows out into a simple melody. These are the days I turn the page to when life gets that bit too much: these in-between moments when we stop living in the past or working towards our futures; when we actually savour the taste of the present. In these precious seconds, I no longer care about any current uncertainties, because everything I need is right here.
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It’s always the last few days: they sparkle and glimmer like no others. Everyone is caught up in some kind of golden exuberance, dragging their fingers across this sepia-stained clingfilm, making sure they can feel every last second. Eyes are stretched as widely as they can go, as if we can somehow vacuum in every last speck of this place into a space that is fit for hand luggage. Even our breathing deepens, hyperventilating like we can somehow store this peace somewhere for the cold months, when Winter’s reality is too much.
These moments, they cling to you; cradle you in a golden canvas. We hold onto them because we know it’s not going to be the same tomorrow; that soon we will wake up in a faraway land, in a bustling city, and we will miss the sweet smell of pine or the crystal green of fresh water. Soon floral prints will fold in the face of wool tailoring and, soon, we will all just be grainy faces stuck on bedroom walls.
Soon enough, these present glories will become faded memories of a better time; a time when days were long and the sunshine was bright. Because none of this real, none of it was ever real. But that’s summertime: when the romantics finally get their chance to live life like they had always dreamed.
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I hope you know that my thoughts eternally tick over to the image of you. There, in the folds of my mind, I always imagine you to be happy. And I pray that is the case for you right now. I pray that your head falls restlessly into bed every night, and that each day is as striking as the sunset which closes it. I pray that the universe continues to smile upon you, adorning you with a thousand stars’ songs. Your joyfulness means more to me than my own, and I hope each day awakens you with drenches of sunlight on your face.
And I want you to know that there are days which are lonely and it feels like the drain drops will never cease. There are days filled with desperate bus journeys and endless empty pavements. But I want you to know that there are also many days filled with endless sunshine and golden memories and stomachs bloated with laughter. Those are the days to live for, for these dreary days are but a mere smear of cloud on this vibrant city’s skyline.
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And slowly, I started to miss him the tiny spaces that you just can’t get to. I missed him in the gap between moments. He stopped being a missing lung or a haunted street; instead, it had felt like something had been unstitched. His delicate weaves in my skin- his tender pulls and knots- were teased out, irreversibly and slowly. Each pulling thread was yet another wave in that ocean which kept us so far apart; the very ocean that continues to keep us in the fixed categories of ‘here’ and ‘there’.
It wasn’t that I was becoming unstitched myself, because I was still fully intact. I was still a whole. Losing him was a sort of numbing, draining, process. He was not an organ, preventing me from functioning, but he was vibrance. Things didn’t break without him. Things kept going, endlessly, tiresomely. I was stripped of colour, much like the northern sky that once streaked above us.
I missed him in sepia-toned sadness. Like our English summer, he was ephemeral and enchanting. But he flew away and I was left in a concrete jungle filled with hard faces and fake personalities. He stretched his wings whilst I had mine clipped. He found his paradise and I found my home in a cage.
I missed him lost on the underground, longing for his silent words of comfort and embraces sent along telephone wires. Only his voice could heal my woulds, and without it I was left cut and weeping. And I would call for him, desperately, endlessly, but he would never quite hear those words.
I stopped missing him at the dead of night, and started missing him at 3pm whilst having coffee with a half-beautiful man. I missed his curved teeth and curved speech. People here always asked questions, and I desperately missed his answers.
Eventually, I missed him when I realised that I had forgotten him. I missed him on that Sunday when neither of us remembered to call. I missed him when I realised our faces stained other people’s photographs, but not each other’s.
I missed him when I realised that he was coming home this month.
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He was my weekday delight and my Sunday torment. He was evenings sprayed with starlight and a flooded tube journey. He was burning bright blue, and he hurt me every time, even when it made me happy. He was an addiction that I never intended to pick up. He crawled slowly into my veins, seeping, corroding, until I couldn’t get enough.
But I couldn’t get away, because I was lonely and he was enchanting and he was the only pair of lips in a faceless city which would whisper my name.
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This glimmer is warm enough to heat my bones through these cold winter days. I would happily lay here and touch fingertips and feel nothing more than the warm whistle of air pass through his lips. Cradled in arms with dreamy-glazed eyes, I will continue to search the delicateness of his features. This soft gap between our bodies: that is just enough.
This just right.
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I’m trapped behind the barriers
screaming out your name
but you’re too far down the platform
just please don’t get on that train.
Hazy mornings are the most free
before the day rears his ugly face
before reality hurtles in
I cherish this bland taste.
But then my mind falls to sliding doors
to final words whispered through cracks
to last strokes of blue skin
to twenty past eight.
Some goodbyes can a outstretch a lifetime
like how I could have stayed all night
kissing your cheek, holding your hand
how leaving would have always been too soon.
I wish that you never got on that train
now all I have left of you are tracks.
Hurtling through the velvet skyline
this moment stretches, making us infinite.
Lungs too filled with air to cope
to even blink
to even mutter.
Here, I could lay my body.
Green crystal waters and lofty pines;
purple mountains eclipse Continental sun.
We soak our skin until everything floods out.
Letting the water pull us in
just enough.
Here, you and I could lay our bodies.
Glittered words and glowing lights
eyes wide in a fixed bloom
they speak words no one can hear,
dancing alone in a sea of pulsating figures.
Here, we could lay our bodies.
And if it weren’t for outstretched hands
and garlands of long-cherished names;
If I could just sink
without leaving an unexplained grave
I would lay my body here,
Drenched in this golden exuberance.
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Broken strings & Pretty things 