Anything. A text, note, a message passed on through a mutual friend. A letter in the stars. A bit of static. Anything but this.
This crippling, hollow silence that echoes between the cut off wavelengths of our brains.
| The human mind is fascinating in how it responds to positive feelings of attraction towards another human. Mutual and reciprocated love burns everything in its path, including the barriers around the brain. Not only is there a figurative connection, there is a literal one. A connection of words, of thoughts. But it is fragile, and thrives on utter trust and belief in the other. [From Arthur Reynolds - A Guide To Psychological Alteration.] |
(i)
"I'll accept no excuses from any of you. I've given you two weeks to complete this assignment, I've offered plenty of support. Put your work in the middle of the tables, I'm going to come and collect it, and pass it out at random."
Dan was bent over his work, so far that his face couldn't even be seen behind his fringe. He didn't want to put it in the middle of the table; he was far too embarrassed by it. They had been told to write about what they thought it would be like to fall in love. Dan had no idea what to write. He'd never been the best at putting his feelings into words, much less feelings he had yet to experience as a sheltered thirteen year old. So he wrote out a load of nonsense that he was ashamed of.
Reluctantly, he sat up straight and added his sheet to the pile in the middle of the table just before Miss Flack arrived in his corner of the room. Dan kept his head relatively low as the teacher placed someone else's work in front of him.
When you say the phrase 'fall in love' people think of cute couples holding hands along the beach or starlit picnics with proposals of eternal adoration, but the truth is different. I've fallen in love with the way the moon reflects off of the pond at the back of my house, in the middle of the night when the world is asleep but I'm barely yawning. I fell in love with the look on my mum's face when my brother came home so drunk that he could barely walk, and all she did was sigh and help him to bed - until the next morning when the house shook with her yelling. Every day, I fall in love with something new about the world, because there is so much to fall in love with. Every inch of the earth can be magical if you look at it in the right light. You know, when you see something and your face just smiles without you telling it to, because what could be a better thing to look at in that moment? The whole world is under this crazy illusion that you need a person to 'fall in love' with and give your all to. Why focus on something that might not even happen when every single atom in the universe has collided to create a beautiful thing just for you to look at?
Dan wanted to rewrite his assignment. He wanted to scribble out every stupid word he had written and replace it with a detailed description of how he fell in love with these whispers wound together into letters and sentences. Immediately, he searched for a name, but he found nothing.
He raised his hand. "Miss Flack?" he called, "This work has no name on it."
With a sigh, the teacher headed towards Dan, and took the paper. "Who does this belong to? I told you all to put your names on."
Dan watched eagerly as a few people squinted at the sheet Miss Flack held up before returning, uninterested, to their marking.
"Oh... sorry, I think that might be mine. I put it on the back, bottom corner, it's hard to see. Sorry..." Dan twisted immediately in the direction of the quiet, apologetic voice behind him. He was met with blue: blue that dominated his vision with fierce intensity; not piercing, but soft, twinkling, full of life and hope and love. There was a whole face still to explore, but Dan couldn't find his way out of the blue.
