I've thought about it some more. |
Retrospect Was it love? You’re wondering it, as have I, and yes, I’ve drawn my own conclusions. I laughed at you, with some obvious condescension, and never once did I feel like I had to hide it, or keep it somewhere where you never saw it. I was relieved that I could laugh at all, so comfortable in the skin that you craved, that I became a believer in the legend of me. A strange weight to carry. I knew that you’d dismiss them, my unthinking abrasions, with your own version of superiority. There was safety in the sweet scorn that smudged the mirrors and distorted our reflections. So common was it that it felt nearly congenial and every time you held me close, I was put back in my place. And you’d laugh at me because you found me funny, or because you thought it was the only way to win. There may have been lessons in it, somewhere in the broken glass and ripped egos but I stepped over them every time. Even when I said that I’d had enough, I never felt the mass of the words. Those acrid mumblings meant nothing, and were forgotten before they hit the dirt. On those frosted, February mornings, with the heavy, pewter skies, you were always curled in beside me, with some sort of contentment in your sleeping eyes, hinting nothing of goodbyes or endings, and this felt irrevocable, like a promise sealed with blood. I had come to put my faith in unconditional endurance. When I’d close my eyes, and shut you out, you’d slowly trace my face with your rough, awkward fingers and whisper to me, never knowing that I was keeping every word, somewhere deep. I was more amazed than you on that cold night when it all came undone. You couldn’t give me what I wanted, without my having to ask and my pride didn’t let me see that I’d stopped giving to you, long before you denied anything of me. My skin no longer possesses the witchery and allure which once held your devotion, and my carefully crafted, savage humour does no longer command your good-natured praises. There are only the whispered words of an artless, ardent boy rooted somewhere inside, shaming me and owning me. They warm me. I don’t laugh at you anymore and there’s no legend here; just a pale, fractured myth which cracked the moment the door closed. Was it love? I say yes, because it’s the only thing I’ve ever known to hurt like this. |