i have you bookmarked -

by =bowie-loon123

vii. Sometimes breakfast, lunch and dinner were like art; food was flung from each corner, creating a futile canvas on every wall. I played a scale of musical doors as they slammed one by one. I'm sure I broke a few vocal chords too. He was always right beside me, yet so far.

But we mingled together. When his hand gripped mine with his feathery touch, it seemed okay to pretend. Maybe my mind still needed to develop, needed watering. Or maybe together we just made feelings obsolete.

iv. And we did.

We sat on park benches blowing smoke kisses and watched movies, that only seemed good because everything else on TV was crap.

Bubblegum. Pot. Gallons of ice-cream. We fed two pigeons and named them Ben and Jerry. We danced to Genesis, even though we both knew that they were possibly the most overplayed band in the world-universe-all-shopping-centers-in-London-ever.

At night we slipped between the park gates and sat by the lake. It felt like the moon was right next to me, rippling and watching us. He blanketed me there and we were fireworks exploding in an array of reds and diamonds. It was havoc and wonder.

ii. When he approached me the next night with a Stella Artois, I could only spew pleasantries from my mouth and swirl the sweetly stinging liquid that dribbled down my chin. The taste made my stomach turn, but I savoured the sensation as it touched my lips _{(like moths flapping their wings within my nerves)}.

His chatter became a hum: A fragile croon. I launched at him and crushed my lips against his as though connecting through sternum, lava-sweat and tongue could never be enough. Brandy probed my senses and his arms locked around me.

It was a temporary safety net and my nails raked down the flesh on his shoulder-blades in needneedneed like a cellist trailing each secret chord.

v. I tried so hard to memorize every inch of him, every second spent with him. It was impossible, of course, but I attempted to do it anyway.

I had to make do with film reels consisting of flashes: Snippets that are best left forgotten.

But I will always remember his eyelashes, crooked and discreetly sloped like the horizon. They were glossy and damp when I told him I loved him. We lay, foreheads touching, as our bodies became part of the beach. The seaweed, shells and foam had been sewn to our muscles and the sand clutched our arms and legs with hungry fingers.

I curled into myself, chin to knee, all too patient as he sighed _{(do I see tears?)}. Finally, his lips parted and my eyes met his blackbird lashes.

"I'm sorry."

iii. I peeled the duvet away.

Eyes still scrunched closed, I raked the curtains aside in the early hours of the morning. Clouds unfurled and flitted across the torn, magenta sky.

I saw the world as I probably should have seen it in that moment: Celestial and exhilarating and sobering. I traced the goosebumps on my clavicle and grabbed a marlboro from the bedside table.

He dragged his jeans over his thighs sprinkled with bluish-gray, placed his palm on my hip and nothing had ever felt like it belonged there so much. He smiled and his dimples looked like valleys spreading across fault-flecked skin. With a chaste kiss on my neck, he was gone.

I plucked a crinkled scrap of paper off my pillow _{(the gentle curve of his skull was still embedded in it)} with his number and the words "We'll meet again" scrawled across it.

i. When I saw him, he reminded me of books.

It was like the moment you discover a specific book: A special book that you had been searching through the shops to find for months and months until you gave up and stopped searching. Finally, when you had almost forgotten about it, you saw it sitting on the bottom shelf. It leaned against the oak as though in deep slumber, isolated and a virgin to fingerprints. And from deep within your abdomen, you leaped.

He reminded me of that as he leaned against the bar. I wanted to nestle within his syllables and trail my nails along every vowel. I craved his parenthesis between my canines and longed to imprint his adjectives on each corner of my brain. I needed to read him.

Insides sprawling _{(my hipbone brushed against his and my spine twitched in waves)}, I extended my hand and reached for him. He didn't take it, he just smiled. The indents on his cheeks, the gap between his teeth and the strand of hair between his thumb and index finger were all I could think about.

vi. I was a collage of guilt, regret and ordinary stitched together to create a girl. I hammered trembling insecurities into his wrists and pinned coffee-stained letters into his ankles.

He consisted of ceramic sympathies, angular cheekbones and daffodil petals we had strewn across the bed sheets because yellow was his favourite colour.

I asked if I counted as dead when I was tired of living. He melted his lips against mine, trailed his bird-bone fingers along the space between my neck and shoulders and asked me if I still didn't feel alive.

I knew I would always return to him.