I hope this flame burns bright enough
for you to burn
with me

I can't remember how many times I've tried to say no before ***. It was always easier to get it over with instead of trying to struggle.

Confronting him about it doesn't work. I did it once. He told me not to give him a cheeky answer, that I should've said no.

But I did say no.

It scares me that he’s capable of this, that he can find it in him to do this to me.

He scares me. I act like he doesn’t, so much that sometimes I can convince myself I can get through everything. But he does, no matter how hard I try to believe otherwise.

I tense up when he walks towards me with that look in his eyes. My heartbeat quickens, and how I wish it were in a good way. I don’t dare to look at him. Then he makes me look up at him, and he kisses me.

And it begins all over again.

Imposter syndrome, that's a thing right?
Fed with compliments all my life but it just makes me feel uncomfortable, like I have to live up to more
That tomorrow I will have to be better than yesterday

Before I met you
I did not know what it meant to be proud of myself
To be able to be myself genuinely and not have anything to live up to
To just be, without having to meet expectations
Purity in its best form

How do you exist?

There's a tin in my kitchen with your name on it and I cannot touch it with my bare hands because it's salt, and I am open wounds.

Loving someone so madly and helplessly like this...
I will never love like this again

We whispered a lot that night, I have no idea what for. We probably didn't want to disrupt the delicate atmosphere with our voices. I wouldn't have changed it anyway. The silence lay down with us, resting its head on our shoulders, breathing calmly when we did, and falling asleep when we did.

The world around us gave in to the silence, giving protagonism to the sound of our lips colliding with every breath we took, our breaths slowing down. It was a slow symphony played only for our ears to hear and our skin to feel. It was the best I'd ever rested in ages. A human body can go without sleep for four to five years, and I've gone years without rest.

We fell asleep together a lot everyday.

I knew even before you started leaning in that I was going to regret this for the rest of my life. I also knew that your lips would make me feel like I was in heaven. They did. Your lips touching mine for the first time, as gentle as a butterfly landing on a petal, was possibly the best thing that had ever happened to me. We forgot.

I melted into it, pressing back harder. Hard enough to have the ghost of your mouth on mine for an eternity, but not hard enough that I'd never want anything but your lips against mine. It was fantastic in a way that it'd never been, and then it was so much better. It was closed lips playing seek-each-other, again and again, and another time, until we didn't know whose lips were ours anymore.

We kissed a lot that day.