Hope

Chapter 2

The first time I kiss Sarah is awkward and tentative, beneath a stormy grey sky and I think that little coil, or string, or rope in my heart might tie a pretty knot up around my throat and kill me.

A few days ago, I had been sat with our newly formed group talking about people we found hot. Sarah was quiet, a simmering jealous mess when I had confessed liking a classmate-- I haven't for three years, but I wanted a reaction. Sure, it was a blatant lie or a bait in our thousand hour long game. But it worked. And when I leaned close enough that I nearly fell off the metal bleachers so only she could hear, asking why, she was nervous, confessing she didn't want me to look at anyone but her in such a rare display off vulnerability where her voice hitched. She probably didn't notice. I did. I noticed the octave, the alto timbre and soprano twitch.

It was tentative, first-- my hand inching next to hers on the metal bench. And her hand had covered mine and cemented her coil around my heart, or my neck, or encompassing me entirely in wet wraps. We waited until the other two left in search for snacks from the local gas station, when I had kissed her. 

 It was barely a brush of lips but I felt it like something had settled, loud in my ears and low in my belly and simultaneously bursted into flames, licking along my spine and into every little cell in my head until those two were engulfed in heat. It was a heady experience, one that left me feeling like nothing before or after was real. The only thing that existed was her, her with her fingers soft against the wrist of the hand that covered her cheek, rubbing along the skin there and I afforded her a smile I know now is my Sarah-smile, goofy and all too big for my face.

She smelt like warm, milky coffee and tasted like cherries and it is still driving me insane anytime I breathe, because the notes of her perfume still cling to the sleeve of my favourite sweater that she would bunch her fingers in. Like she's taken up permanent residence within my chest.  I want to hide in her neck and laugh and sigh and maybe even just morph into her because it's all so perfect and this thing is precious. I want to catch it in my hands, and keep it safe from all the horrors I know to live outside. I want to watch her dance at the bus stop, and hand her fistful of flowers I steal from my mother's garden but claim to have happened upon on the way to school. 

Her laugh carried across the dark air like honey, thick and syrupy. It made my legs weak, but I don't think she realized it. She was too busy freaking out, with those lovely eyes flickering everywhere but to me, as though the blush colouring her cheeks could be anything aside endearing to me. And then she had all but sprinted for her ride in the distance a while later and I rode the bus home with a smile I couldn't do anything about but force everyone around me to soak up a little bit too, the sunlight she always leaves my lungs full of.  I have the terrible urge to tell her nice things, make her smile and hope for a blush. I want to stand on my toes and try for a kiss. I listen to music and every song is about her and somehow none of them can quite do her justice. She's more than rhyming words and a witty turn of phrase

So, for very good reason I spend extra time getting ready September 6th-- the first day of junior year all with a pleasant little smile on my mouth that i contort in angry refusal to explain to my mother who watches with quiet suspicion as i hum something off the Top Hits  to myself and pass the straightener through the touched-up blonde hair again. I hate heat-- and the heat of the straightener is making me nauseas and angry but it's okay. 

Because today, for perhaps the first time in written history, i have something to look forward to. Sarah.

Sarah, who's soft for me and evokes a trust that I  wont tarnish it.

Sarah, that smells so much like sunshine it mutes the moonlight I know to be made of.

Sarah, who is the source of my Madness.