Grace.
I'm not gonna say, that the first time I saw you, I wasn't completely lost for words at your astounding beauty, because if it wasn't for the alcohol, I would have been.
To think that if you hadn't come to hang out that night, we might never have met, scares the fuck out of me, we were still kids back then, but it didn't make a difference.
We were at that park behind the local bar, and our mutual friend was on the phone trying to persuade you - her 'bent as a roundabout' friend - to leave the party you were at to come and join us, and I told her to tell you if you came I'd give you thirty cigarettes for free, I don't even know why I said that, I didn't even know you.
Anyway half an hour later you showed up, and you were just as drunk as me, and you were wearing a leather jacket and leather boots and I remember the way your hair was curled and how you just looked so good. You introduced yourself by your last name, I saw the bottle of vodka in your hand and we got really really drunk on the swings. Then I told you you could only have the cigarettes if you kissed me, and you did kiss me, more than once actually.
Your jacket was really cold, and I told you I had a similar one, and you had ripped jeans on like me and I thought we could be really good friends.
Then a year later we met again in a rock and roll bar, we had fake ID's and we just felt so cool. We stayed until closing time, so when we were left out on the street waiting for a cab at 1am, it felt compulsory that I asked if I could kiss you, and you tasted like cigarettes and alcohol and lipstick and I just wanted to kiss you again and again, so I did, and the kiss continued right back to my place where we stumbled through the door not even making it to the bedroom.
I was feeling pretty dirty, your hips, my hands, your swing, your dance. We had really messy sex on the couch but it was so hot the way you kept a cigarette in your mouth or between your fingers the whole time, only taking it out your moth to kiss me. Then after I watched you smoking out the window wearing just a shirt and pants and there was something so amazing about it, and I was hallucinating, things were fine in my head.
Somehow you persuaded me to let you stay the night though I knew what would happen if I did though. The next morning you were illuminating the right side of my bed and I had to stop myself kissing you again, I was having all these god damn visions I swear that's when I started to fall.
Then it changed. Thoughts fell company and dreams as friends, I'm only half here and the other half pretends that I'm just a bad haircut or
some fashion from last week. No one really knows me at all.
But sometimes I like living in my own world, disconnected and so naive, out of key.
I was naive when I opened up to you, that night when we were sat on that bench on the docks watching the water. That night I let you kiss me when you moved in really close, it was our first sober kiss and the first time we'd been out just the two of us and fuck you made me feel so alive, so far from empty, your recklessness fitted so perfectly with mine. We chain smoked and started drinking and when I hung off the railings you asked me if it was scary living on impulse and I told you no because it makes me feel alive, putting myself close to death brings me back to life. So you also sat on the edge of the railings with me, but I knew you were scared so I helped you off and instead I asked you to dance.
As we danced drunkenly around the docks, your body pressed up against mine, your right hand intertwined with my left hand, your right hand on my hip, I felt it necessary to tell you I loved you, and i didn't care if you said it back or not, I didn't expect you to because we barely knew each other, I'd just never met someone with everything that you had.
When you said you loved me back, it felt like everything that hurt just stopped hurting, and when I laid in your bed that night, I know you didn't sleep either, but it was so perfect.
We spent every other day together, I'd meet you after work and you'd wait for me after my night classes, and we'd walk around and go into cafés and we'd drink a lot and smoke till we couldn't breathe and there was something so intimidating about the way you'd alway seem so distant yet so close. We'd drink coffee and tea and I'd look at you to try and figure out where your brain was at, and you'd catch me looking into your eyes and you'd mouth 'I love you.' And I'd mouth it back.
Then there was that time when we sat on cold fold up chairs in my garage with my record player on and we danced around drinking red wine, and you brought boxes of at least one hundred records and we picked out different ones and you'd sit on my knee and kiss me with your arms wrapped round my neck, and you'd turn around and grind down on my crotch, teasing me. Asking you to dance before every song was so cliché but you agreed to dance every time, your fingers hiding onto my shirt or my hips, mine always falling to your hips or your back before I'd pull you in by your jacket and kiss you, I was so in love.
Remember that night, you wouldn't let me touch you, you made me watch you, I still remember that night so vividly, in the living room. You wouldn't let me touch you as you undressed yourself slowly, and I still remember the speed of my heart, you kept whispering 'no touching.' Into my neck, your breath hot in my ear as you started to fuck yourself in front of me, and I remember that night was the night I realised how much I always wanted to touch you, how good it felt to touch you, whether I was making you feel good or just holding you, they say that everyone's addicted to something and maybe, maybe I am addicted to touching you, maybe it's the closeness or the intimacy or maybe it's just everything at once.
Then, then it got bad.
I felt your sickness brush against my arm as I walked by you - heard your voice but I couldn't tell that it was you. And, slowly, I watched your sickness slip away into a place
L that I'd once feared with everything I had but I was not afraid this time. I was ready to fight. So I gave chase and found it, finally, slowly feeding from your head, and for you, my friends, and my family, I grabbed it firmly by the neck.
"For my lover you have ruined" I dug my nails into its flesh.
"and for her life that you will not take"
Slammed its head against the brick.
Your fear poured out onto the pavement and I screamed "Too long you've torn us into pieces,
firmly held onto our wrists. Today I bury you in me." I swallowed every inch of it.
You said 'come and hold me, I'm terribly afraid, while you're shouting at the stars, my scars are not fading away."
You see these scars will fade away but never disappear, my dear. We'll raise our fists like lightning to rods to god and if he strikes us down, then he strikes us down. What can we do about that? We can't change fate. But first, let him hear us speak "we are like the legacy of thunderstorms we watched and swore in doorways, we will be the same again."
I'll hold you, as you have held me -
you've held me in your heart, you've carried me in your arms. we'll be set free from fear.
We've felt our failures, darling we've watched our passions leave, but look, we're still breathing on.
You see baby, I keep falling for the future after tripping on the past. And I am always tearing my brain apart to make the anguish last like it defines me. Or reminds me I've found comfort in my suffering and uncertainty in happiness and death, because what's next is such a mystery to me. I am terrified of all the things I feel on the inside but on the out I cannot see. I want you to put your hand into my hand and lay your head into my chest.
We are lovers, we are the last of our kind, just keep me safely in the pocket of those black ripped jeans and I swear that we'll be fine. Grace understand that if you're cold I'll keep you warm, and besides, there's so much beauty in your storm. So come down with me to the shore and what's more? Well I adore you.
I know that somewhere you are sleeping darling, likely dreaming off the pain. I know that even with the seams stitched tightly the scars we don't see but feel will always remain.
I swear that even with the distance slowly blaring out your name your eyes will always catch the light the right way, the smoke will disappear and you will love me when you are ready.
