Oct 2015
We’re sitting on the plaid couch in my basement, your hand in mine like a puzzle piece we took forever to find. It’s when we’re doing nothing when I realize that I want to do everything with you. It is almost always winter in my mind, my thoughts permanently frozen in time, paralyzed to my bed sheets the way icicles cling to shivering windowpanes. But with you, it’s different, our blossoming love proving the existence of a perpetual spring. We grow wildly- like two oak trees embraced behind the fence in my backyard, our branches intertwined and our roots firmly entrusted in the dampness of the soil. Not even the strongest breath of wind could destroy us.
And we walk hand-in-hand in the breath of October, the kind that stings like knives to the bone. You forget to bring a jacket with you but you insist that you are perfectly fine, that the electricity radiating between our fingers is enough to keep you warm for a collection of intoxicating eternities. And to us, the rest of the world barely exists, their watchful eyes and orchestral voices like anthems proclaiming the silliness of our juvenile love, a bright-eyed girl in a violet trench coat and a boy with a smile so bright it’s almost as if she had accidentally fallen in love with the rays of the sun. The kind of livid brightness that warms the coldest of hearts, the darkest of rooms.
But we walk to the neighborhood coffee shop with the combined tranquility of two retired lovers strolling through Paris and the frenzied excitement of exhilarated children on the seemingly endless journey to Disney World. Every welcoming front porch and townhouse we pass feels empty in comparison to the home we created within us, with a fire permanently kindled in our souls and between our restless fingers. You kiss me where the sidewalk ends, between the trees that resemble the magnificence we have become- the sky melting every molecule of transparent sadness I had left within me through an endless palette of pastel bliss. And in that moment, we become the fragile remnants of summer heat stuck trapped and misunderstood in the birth of autumn.
And we walk hand-in-hand in the breath of October, the kind that stings like knives to the bone. You forget to bring a jacket with you but you insist that you are perfectly fine, that the electricity radiating between our fingers is enough to keep you warm for a collection of intoxicating eternities. And to us, the rest of the world barely exists, their watchful eyes and orchestral voices like anthems proclaiming the silliness of our juvenile love, a bright-eyed girl in a violet trench coat and a boy with a smile so bright it’s almost as if she had accidentally fallen in love with the rays of the sun. The kind of livid brightness that warms the coldest of hearts, the darkest of rooms.
But we walk to the neighborhood coffee shop with the combined tranquility of two retired lovers strolling through Paris and the frenzied excitement of exhilarated children on the seemingly endless journey to Disney World. Every welcoming front porch and townhouse we pass feels empty in comparison to the home we created within us, with a fire permanently kindled in our souls and between our restless fingers. You kiss me where the sidewalk ends, between the trees that resemble the magnificence we have become- the sky melting every molecule of transparent sadness I had left within me through an endless palette of pastel bliss. And in that moment, we become the fragile remnants of summer heat stuck trapped and misunderstood in the birth of autumn.
