stardust & silk

F E B R U A R Y.

i.

The year is still fresh, with summer flowers blooming just in time for Valentine's Day; couples waltzing down the street with arms linked and smiles in their eyes and love on their lips. You walk beside me, the distance between our arms minimal but the chasm between our souls a valley I'm not sure I can cross without breaking something vital.

ii.

I always felt warm around you, like you were making flowers grow in my chest as the weeds wilted away, leaving behind a heart brimming with life and a girl wondering what I would do if you were to ever leave me.

iii.

We were sitting on the rocks by the beach one night, watching as the tide came in and slowly began to swallow us, but neither of us said anything. We knew we still had some time before the ocean completely engulfed us and by then we'd be long gone, not a single trace of us left behind on the beach; the rocks we'd just been sitting on disappearing from view and taking with it all the secrets and confessions that had been spilled upon them that day.

It was cold, the wind was blowing and even under the faintest glow of the moon and the stars, I could see the goosebumps that had erupted all over my skin. And as we sat there while I pretended I wasn't cold, you told me that he could never make me happy.

I shrugged in response, but I didn't take the cigarette from between your lips because you didn't take him out of my arms and we sat there pretending. Pretending that he would make me happy, and pretending that you didn't love me in the way I always wished he would.

We sat there wishing and watching as the waves flowed in and out, trying to map out a pattern with the way they came and went - though we'd never succeed.

We watched them for what felt like hours, lulling ourselves into a false sense of calm that we knew would never last - pretending, again, that everything would work out on its own and that you didn't love me and that I didn't care he never would. But then you spoke and it felt like the sky got darker in response, or maybe that was just my mood.

"He'll never write you poetry, you know that right?" You said, all blasé with a cigarette resting between your fingers.

"Who cares," I sighed, wondering how the clouds would feel if one day the oceans stopped dancing for them. "We should go," I said, knowing the pretending was over and it was back to reality.

But you weren't ready to go yet and you were watching me in that way where your eyes were tight around the edges and the normally loose upturn of your lips was missing and I knew you were trying to tell me something. But somehow, in times when you need it most, no combination of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet ever seem appropriate - ever seem big enough - to encapsulate your meaning.

"You care," you finally said. "You care about poetry, even if you like to pretend you don't. You care because things matter to you. Because no matter how much you like to pretend that what people say to you and how people feel doesn't bother you, it does. You like to pretend you take everything as a joke and hide behind walls of sarcasm and buckets of wit so people don't see the softness that coats your heart. But I know. I know that you're a romantic at heart and that more than anything you love to laugh and make people laugh with you. I know that you can never say no to someone and that you'll always put everyone before yourself; and I know that when your friends tell you about their weekend or about the new boy in their life, a little part of you feels jealous because you wish that was you and you hate yourself for it. I know that you're soft and good and kind to your core but that you're scared to let anyone see that because that means they can hurt you. Ruin you from the inside out in a way you're not sure you could ever recover from."

I didn't know what to say to that, but it didn't matter because you weren't done and each word you spoke felt like a bullet to the gut that healed as quickly as it came, only to be followed by another and another and another until I was numb to their feel.

"He got in," you said. "And that's the problem. Because you're loyal and in love and you're letting him destroy you," you looked away from me then and closed your eyes, the cigarette between your fingers burning away forgotten. "I know you won't leave him," you said. "It's killing you that he won't love you the way you want, but you'll never tell him and you'll never leave so we're stuck here sitting on these rocks, spilling secrets and pretending everything's ok even when we know it's not."

iv.

People talk about falling in love, all gentle and slow like a cool summers breeze, but you felt like a tornado and I was caught in your aftermath