There's something about the way you look at me. It's like you can see me, truly see me, and that's different. And when our fingertips touch and our lips brush each other, you make me feel almost invincible. We might have stepped straight out of a fairy tale, I'm not sure, I don't remember anything since waking up in the hospital. But you were there from the start and you helped to heal me with your coaxing words and confidence behind my ability to improve. I had no idea who I once was so I just went along with it, went along with you. You say I'll remember everything one day and I say, if I have spent a past with you, I wish I could remember, for both our sakes.
I am left only to imagine us running out into the rain, dancing in the middle of car parks, eating take-aways together, building snowmen come winter, taking road-trips to the beach come summer. I can imagine us falling in love with the each other through the way we read and the way we talk and the way you run your hands through your hair (it makes me dizzy for some reason).
I think you're so brave to accept me even though I've forgotten you and the way we fell in love. I look at photographs and you describe the scene in a detail that astonishes me.
So tell me, why do you still love so bravely? This is a sad place where people forget things too easily. You would think that something as powerful as what we shared couldn't just disappear. But it has.
In the deep of night I am lying on my side, staring at wallpaper that is fading. I study the intertwining pattern and feel only a morsel of familiarity. The warmth of your body radiates next to mine and I'm too hot, we're too close. I feel this often over the past couple months I have moved back with you. I don't know whether I used to yearn the cool and emptiness of the night but I do now.
You want me to be the same and I know I cannot give that to you. As I feel the soft wood of the stairs under my feet, I understand that you're only loving me out of pity. As I open the back door, I realise you must be a different person too. As I step out into the night, I feel like it's too much. Picking up the pieces of an old life might just be more difficult than just starting a new one. I was given an opportunity to- maybe I should have taken it. Maybe I was unhappy before despite what you said. So many possibilities, too many options. I want to live properly, love more than just you because even though you charm me with your sweet gestures and kind eyes, I don't know if I love you enough.
Outside I am still. Lights from streetlamps and windows shine on in solitude. The distance rumble of traffic helps to calm the crowds in my head. I imagine them all driving away in their cars. You go with them and leave me in the back garden. I don't know whether that's what I want. Fairy tales are too good, too perfect to be true. People don't love like you do, so easily and so faithfully.
Suddenly, you're here with me speaking softly and I don't know why but I'm crying. Apologizing for forgetting, wishing so much to remember.
And then, a memory. I'm no longer in the back garden, I'm with you in a car and we're driving away. I'm in the passenger seat and your eyes are on me and for some reason, I captured that moment in my mind and stored it away with all the strings attached: the feeling, the smells, the sounds. It was beautiful.
You hold me and tell me that you have loved falling in love with me again. I don't know if I love you or ever will love you as much as I once did but I do think you're brave to act the way you do and I admire your willingness to stay with me.
I think you're fearless.
a/n: For _cerulean 's musical chairs competition based off the song 'Fearless' by Taylor Swift about first love.
