To have a heart filled to bursting. To look at another and know – just know. How romantic, how beautiful, how otherworldly and something so devoid of reality.
I pretend to know heart break, of shattering under loss and what it’s like. To let love go and watch it never come back. Can I truly know, can I truly understand, can I truly ever feel the rhythm of another heart, beating alongside mine, with mine, connected? And can I ever let that go?
Our hearts are easy to lose, easy to wear thin, and it’s even easier to keep it forever. Enough time that even it gets sick of staying in a chest, locked away. With a key that never gets taken by anyone else.
We don’t stay young forever. Our souls don’t always have that innocent shine to them and we don’t always give our heart out, when we do shine; more brighter than the sun.
I don’t know why. I just know we don’t have much time, but in the end, in that little something, we had something going – something special I wouldn’t give the world for.
All along in a dreary, forlorn world of hunger we had something. Something between us and for us, only us. We were the only ones in the world for the shortest of times. And we didn’t hate it. Did the opposite of hating each other, which might have been worse but by god I wish that what it was now.
Because all I see when I close my eyes is you. Forever and always you – as if every memory we’ve ever had is etched into my heart and soul and we were all that’s left.
I wanted so much more together, we could have had anything – and now nothing, but I didn’t care as long as we had each other. Our arms wrapped around each other and everything in between us.
You looked more beautiful, in that moment, in our bed, than I have ever seen you.
I have seen you in the moonlight, scantly clad in the river and joyous in every line of your body, you were beautiful then as you are now. I have seen you in the light of day with the wind washing away the hair from your face, sunlight highlighting the best parts of you and your eyes slowly coming to meet mine. I feel as if I have seen every inch of you and yet I have seen nothing at all.
The many moments between us lead to me wondering about the way your hair would feel, the way your body would feel, the way your lips would feel against mine. The very moments between us stretch onto infinity in my memory and I find when I meet your eyes, I cannot look away. I wonder if its as difficult for you as it is for me.
There is something lost between us and I know it. I watch from afar as you dance away, in the grasp of someone else, in the hold of another, in a way I cannot come near. I have never felt so numb with fear.
You have something and I wonder constantly what it would take for me to touch it, just a piece of the light to hold within my grasp. You are something I have never wanted to lose and everything that cannot be mine. Watching you now, I wonder if our worlds will always be apart because even if I’m on the other side of a mirror watching you become something more; I wonder about our hearts and everything in between.
They watched the flowers in the dark; the moment between them wasn’t made of solitude or even gratitude. This moment was one of unsaid words, of watching each other before looking away into a night that could swallow anyone.
The immortal looked back at her and said, in a voice that meant he wanted to stop hurting,” how can you bare to be mortal?”
She didn’t turn to look at the curve of his face; She felt a crushing breathlessness in her chest instead and stopped to take a breath. Her shoulders hunched in, her hand still trembling from thumb to index finger, she thought before speaking.
“Some days I can’t bare it. I look at everyone around me. I think about how I belong. I feel the home I have now down to my very bones, it’s with me and keeps me warm, drives me on; and I can’t bare to die.” She looked at him then, at the pain in his beautiful eyes.
“But I am mortal and that certainty hangs over me. I could die gloriously in battle or asleep surrounded by friends, I could die today or tomorrow, or even at the stroke of midnight. It wouldn’t matter, what would matter is how, is why. My death would only mean something because I lived, because I found my home and because I loved and because I lost.” She stopped then and for a long time not one of them spoke.
He could feel the weight of her mortality now as if it was on his own shoulders. Weights that might have felt like chains in one moment and blessings in the next. He knew mortality, but had never felt it before. He knew death, but had never embraced it himself and now, now he felt strangely adrift from words with far more wisdom than they should have. He knew nothing at all.
“You know.” She started again, staring at her hands in the darkness, her fingers running over each other.
“Your going to have many, many moments before you. We mortals, we have our stories, just as you have yours, and ours are far shorter. One day we turn into paintings and tales and mothers and fathers, but I am watching the stars stretch on and breathing fresh air. Right now, I am not history or a forgotten memory. I am alive, with you, and in this moment, we are infinite.”
Her eyes were wide, were beautiful, were heartbreaking, and with gentleness that belied the way he trembled, he sat beside her and took the curve of her face into his hand; wishing for eternity, though it was granted to him.
He knew he had to let her go, let her be forever free, she was never anything that could be held for long. Some birds were never meant to be kept in a cage, but he loved her more than anything.
His heart was already breaking, turning to grief. He just wanted, knowing he could not have the heart connected to his, beautifully beating. For this instant they were otherworldly and devoid of reality, for they had everything between them.
His heat was lost and wearing thin, it knew of heartbreak, of shattering under loss, of letting love go and watching it never come back, of staying in a locked away chest the key lost from grief.
When he closed his eyes then, when he leaned into her, still trembling, she shushed him gently and held on. “I love you,” he wanted to whisper, but the words never left his lips.
All he saw when he closed his eyes was her, every moment of her, etched into his heart, with everything in between. He loved and loved and knew eventually it would be time to let go. Knew with everything that cried within him, their moment would end, and the rest of history, beginning
He loved more closely than the rays of the sun
On her cheekbones in the morning.
Looking and feeling more keenly
he could never imagine it felt like this.
A dance, with whirls and spins,
with the briefest of eye contacts.
With everything between them.
In the height of passion
He wonders what you would do with his heart.
With the beating rhythm that holds you captive,
never lets you forget, remember the infinity of this moment.