Thousand Paper Cuts

Thirteen : october breaths

Skye :

Maybe love is an evergreen tree
It's roots entangled in your heart
Or maybe it's a well you fall in
It's improbable to climb out
They say all the great love stories
Can change the world
But before that, it changes you
Reveals secrets of the universe
Which you find in other's soul
The one who never gives up on you

Mark :

Perhaps love is like an open sky
Surrounding all of your soul
Or it's an ocean you drown in
When you can finally breathe
They say love touches once
And lasts forever and always
Even if forever doesn't exist
But the feelings are true enough
To die in someone else's arms
The one who Is willing to die with you

Skye :

She didn't know his past, but the feelings he endowed her in the stomach felt like she had known him all her life.

When she was thirteen, her stepmother Julia had once said,
"Write about love, Skye."
But she would always shrug and say,
"How can I write about something I don't know?", which wasn't completely true. She did know what love was, but just didn't know how it felt.
After meeting Adam during high school, she had thought maybe that was her chance to feel love, as in great films and books, but that never really happened, and she seemed "okay" with it, so she kept on dating Adam. That was the reason her first novel wasn't about love, even though she'd wanted it to.
And now she realized how empty she had been, when she was overfilled with fragile butterfly feelings.
The way Mark's eyes changed colour every moment, made her whole life bright. Or the way he hadn't touched her yet, still she felt the beginning and the end of whole universe.

She would never have the courage to say it out loud, but she really loved him. Just like in those great films.

Mark :

Being with her felt like having the whole world.

"Why were you crying last night?" He asked, as the fireworks were still exploding.
"I don't know. It's just that......"she stopped, and added,
"I'm just an idiot."
"Sorry for everything", he said, "like, how I had treated you before, or hadn't read your letters at first. Provided this fact, I am an idiot."
She smiled like the colour of roses, and replied,
"Hah. Maybe we're both idiots."
He kept staring at her, as if the time had stopped, and all he had was now.
"What?" She asked.
"Nothing. It's just.....your smile."
"It's just a smile." She responded, trying to roll her eyes.
"Maybe for you", he said, and took one step ahead. Close enough to hear her October breaths, because he needed her. More than ever.

His heart was beating too loud. His hands were shaking, as she looked back at him. For the first time, even forever felt not enough for his love.

Before he could do something, she threw her unburnt cigarette down the balcony, and locked her lips with his, and he realized his whole life was a fraud before. Just as the song goes,

"Tell me darling, I'm yours before mine
The world was a lie, a weird rhyme"

While he held her face with both of his hands under the stars and amid the fireworks red and yellow, he wondered that many people had kissed under the same stars before. Many young lovers had fallen for eachother, being witnessed by the same sky. Many of them were even dead now, and their love being buried with them.
But right now, in that cold February night, he loved her like no one else. He was alive, and he owned it to the best feeling in the world, or maybe to all those lovers rotting in the ground. He loved her, without ever loving himself.
So, as he pulled back for air, he rubbed his thumb on her chin, and said,
"I'm in love with you, Skye McLaren."
She didn't even moved slightly, so he felt okay to continue,
"I know that love is like a sea you drown in, or maybe a feeling so common in the universe that everyone wants to be loved, but still, Skye, I'm in love with you. And it feels as good as writing a first line on some blank page. Yes, I was a blank page before I met you, and you gave me a beautiful plot. I was a boy who never liked humans or bright sun, but the moment I really saw you......my whole world got it's sun, moon and stars. I didn't have any of those things, Skye, until you stumbled in my life like an unexpected parcel. I love the way you look at me, as if I belong somewhere too, or the way you laugh so loud that it brightens my void. I'm so grateful today, that we'd met in that taxi before, or how you've written me those letters. I know I'm not Romeo, but I love you enough to drown with you."
He stopped and waited for her to say something. She didn't say anything for a long time. He laughed a little, and said,
"Okay, that was lame..."
He looked into her eyes, that were almost tearing up, and all she said was,
"Woah, have you written all this speech and had practiced it in front of mirror for days? Because when you were speaking, you looked like James Dean giving his last speech."
He laughed, and this time, he was the first one to kiss her. He kissed her as if she was the central point of the universe, and she kissed him back, as if it was the first thing she'd learned in school.