36 Letters, 3 Poems, 2 Stories

3 Poems (Part 2)

Hazy espresso eyes; he had hazy, espresso eyes, I wrote. I wrote to him when I was no longer sixteen or heartbroken. I was now seventeen and love struck. I realized in my one year with him that he didn't speak to me like a regular boyfriend, he didn't look at me like he was lovesick, he didn't kiss me like he'd always wanted to do so. In all his way, in everything he said and did, I was his. I was his like I had been since the day I was born. I wasn't certain if that bothered me, or if I liked it. Liked it the way someone you love says your name and it makes something inside your belly explode.

It was so easy, being with him, it felt natural. Sometimes, because it felt so much like it was meant to be, being with him scared me. I had never been so close to anyone before and he seemed completely ready to dive into someone. Into me. I had often wondered before what people who were together talked about, what conversation could actually be interesting enough? Engaging enough after asking about their day? I was worried, in fact that we would soon run out of things to talk about. But that didn't happen. I started to talk to him about everything. From the moment I woke up till the second I fell asleep, talking to him on my phone.

I talked to him about things I had never revealed to anyone. Strangely, so strangely that sometimes I wouldn't believe it, he listened. But that was it. He simply listened.

But at 16 I was a poet so I dusted my love in poem and sent it to him. Of all the things he listened to, he didn't read the poem I wrote. Of things even stranger, I never asked him why he didn't read it. I asked if he had read the poem, he said no and so I asked how his day was. I asked if he had had dinner yet. I didn't ask if he as ever going to read it.

"You are each beautiful thought

You make me distraught" I wrote. Another poem, enveloping what I did not say.

"You are worth each moment of agony

a never-ending sea" I wrote.

It was nearly 2:30 a.m. and the dead of winter. I had my quilt over my head and we were arguing for the first time ever. I felt as if I would break down any moment but at the same time, somewhere inside me I felt a thrill, an excitement. It was absurd but the fight brought something inside of me to life. I wasn't entirely certain but I thought he felt the same way. Soon we were fighting more than we were talking. It was exhilarating.

Where I would feel only thrills and tears together, he seemed to be freeing himself from some sort of beast that ensnared him. Each fight would make him more violent and each apology more broken. Each fight would make me more in love and each apology more shaken.

"Mystify, mesmerize, simply intoxicate

Those hazy espresso eyes, carved to invigorate" I wrote.

One evening. And I absolutely detested evenings because they were neither day nor night, they belonged to neither the light nor the darkness, they were confused. One evening when we were not talking but fighting. We fought about a lot of things, we fought about colors, we fought about songs, we fought about history, we fought about needs, about habits about ideas about thoughts, about love. One evening when we were not talking but fighting he said,

"Do you want me to read your poems now?" except that he didn't say it, he spat the words out like it was something nasty he ate. His words were bitter, they turned my poems into something revolting, something hideous.

His words made him hideous to me when I had thought he was the most beautiful thing to ever have walked the earth.

(To be continued...)