Thank you! Over and Rewound won PTX Fanfiction Awards, and The Last Hunger Games {PTX} was runner up! <3
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
So. Meter. Understand meter when you write poetry, especially songs or rhyming poetry. Understand rhythm no matter what you write. I'll explain later. I have a chapter to write.
I close my eyes to escape his. I bring a forkful of liver pâté up to my lips, hold my breath, and brace myself. One-two-three-go. Chew, ew, swallow, keep it down, chug water, done. That wasn't so bad. "I just want you to understand that I meant every word," I explain. "That was step 33. That... that's how I feel about you. I know I don't know what to call it, but that's how I've felt for a long time." I wish I had something more meaningful to say, more absolute. It doesn't feel like I've said enough, but this is where I am. I wish that I could just say "I love you."
I'm on the edge of my seat, listening to his breathing and trying to figure out what it means. Why did I think this would be cute, dropping all this on him at once? I could have explained the Twitter account so much more tactfully. And how did I expect to explain how I feel when I have exactly zero perspective?
I didn't tell him before, and I shouldn't have now. How does this help anything? He looks down on himself, and I guess I thought I should tell him just how much I look up to him, but it was stupid to imagine some nice words would change the way he sees himself. It's not that easy. And what about moving in? He hesitated because it would be messy, complicated, and irresponsible to try to live with a friend he wished were more than that, but does this help? No, it just makes it more complicated.
Scott reaches across the table to tilt my chin up. His eyes lock on mine again, and I watch as he pulls away the curtains and throws open the windows to his soul. He tells me silently not what he's thinking, not what he's feeling, but his entire state of mind. It lies plainly before me, awaiting a response, and I realize I'm not giving him one. I concentrate for a few seconds before finding the latch to unfasten my mask, to let my own mind and soul show through to my face unfiltered, and suddenly we're communicating. Instead of clumsily picking out words with predefined meanings that don't quite fit, we're falling back on the natural languages of our faces, the languages we learned as children. It's absolutely intuitive, and trying to think about it or process it ruins the flow and destroys the true meaning. I just have to trust my instincts.
We could talk all this out, but ultimately, words are only florid justifications we make for ourselves to rationalize instinctive reactions. What we say depends on what we feel, and we can try to make it go the other way around, but it's faster just to watch Scott's face as it responds to mine and understand where we'll end up at the end of the long discussion we'll probably have anyway.
There's progress. We're getting somewhere, I think. He's confused, now though. I'm trying to communicate something, and it simply isn't getting through to him. He doesn't believe it, or he doesn't understand it, or he doesn't believe it's really what I'm trying to say. My insistence heightens, and he just looks more lost. I search for words, but when I try to understand exactly what it is I'm trying to express, I'm as lost as Scott is. There are words for it, I know, but they don't feel right.
What exactly am I feeling? My memories and emotions are a solid mass of mixed up melted crayons, deep, dull navy blue gray, with blurry streaks of color—waxy pink, bright yellow, purple dark enough to almost blend in, more hues than I can name, most too subtle to pick out. That's only the surface. How can I hope to articulate it?
It's what I felt when I missed him late at night so badly that I told myself, almost convinced myself, he was sound asleep in the next room over, not somewhere across the world or across the city without me. It's what I felt when I saw him on stage. It's the way I care so deeply and irreversibly that it's easier just to hate him, and the way I can never manage to for long. It's how I felt when I wrote down his best qualities, his defining characteristics. It's how I would give anything for him. It's all those things and a thousand others all taken together, and it's the depth of them, the way he's more important than any person has any right to be.
It fits Scott's idea of love, even if that doesn't explain it entirely. He said himself that he'd bet anything I was in love with him; he just didn't realize it was us he was talking about. I try again to show him instead of telling him, but again I fail. He can't make the connection. He can't see himself as desirable. "I love you," I pronounce quietly, almost tentatively.
It sounds wrong. It's as close as I can get, but it still doesn't capture what I want to say at all. It feels less powerful than when I said the same words to Alex. It feels like I'm not saying anything. It sounds weak. Scott's face is sinking deeper into worry and confusion. I'm still trying, more and more desperately, to explain with my eyes. I don't know how to say it. It's simply not the same thing that people mean when they say, "I love you."
Maybe we can't communicate this way anymore. Maybe we've changed too much, forgotten too much. Maybe there was never an expression for this any more than there are words. He's shaking his head. I'm panicking. What have I done? What have I done?
