I’m tired, yet I cannot sleep. For when I do, your image lines the walls of my imagination. I endure long nights with the echoes of your words reverberating in such a melodic way, that they slowly merge into one harmonic sound that almost sends me to sleep, but not quite. I simply teeter on the edge of unconsciousness so precariously, that I shake myself awake at the very threat of falling into it. How long must this go on, I cry into the darkness. How long have we been dancing in the dark to the tune we now regret creating.
You say it’s over, you’re done, you wish to be alone, yet when I stoically accept your choice, turn to leave, you change your mind, reach out, say you love me more than before. Say we broke it to mend it. Make love to me in the bed that was moments before the scene of a crime, committed to our union. I feel silently relieved, but suddenly confused. Should love be this fickle? Should love be so conflicting?
We rinse and repeat, over and over and over again. With my reaction getting weaker every time, ‘til I’m wailing and begging you to stay. ‘I can’t leave you when you’re strong, show me your strength!’ You demand, as I’m lying on the floor, brow beaten from your digs and jibes that reduce me to nothing. Is this a test? Is love meant to be so gruelling?
Each time we think the last time is the last time, until we make love, smooth over the cracks and carry on as if this behaviour is normal. Our normal. And everyone thinks we’re mad. Yet we don’t seem to care. Until we do. Until you write words that I read and can’t unread and I say things about my past love you can’t bear to hear. I turn miserable and you turn cold and the love making turns to something else completely. Something jagged and cruel. Something that leaves me feeling chewed up and spat out. Is love meant to be so brittle? Is love meant to be so bruised?
Lost, I don’t walk away, I run, with you sending emails in my wake. Telling me you’ll always love me, but wish me luck. You saying I’m magic, yet not asking for me back. I reply with heartache I can’t conceal. We spend months on the phone every day. Me telling you my regrets. You telling me you’re not with anyone else. Me getting hurt when you go do the things we were meant to do together. You getting hurt when someone walks into my life, so I turn them around and walk them back out. Keep the door open for you, on the basis that you drip feed me just enough to encourage it. Until I finally ask you to step through and you reply with indignation. You wish to be alone! Had I forgotten?! Had I misread the signs that had been covered by the fog your indecision?
We fight like lovers, talk like friends, hold on to one another as though our very last breath depended on it. I say I love you and you reply the same, yet draw a trench in the sand deep enough to act as burial space for the pair of us. You verbally lay our love to rest, yet actively swim in it. Kill it, yet give life to it. Hold onto the ashes, whilst speaking your prayers. I cannot tell which way to turn, for every direction leads me back to you. Back to a time when I let myself float in your waters. Saw your soul through the colour of your eyes. Was held in your calloused hands. And called it love. And life. When I gave myself to you as though it was the only thing I had to do that day. And maybe it was. Maybe it was all I wanted. You.
But you wanted me to want more. Because you did. You wanted mountain tops, when I was offering you the range. You wanted the spotlight, when I was offering you a home. You wanted the material, when I was offering you the ethereal. We’re just different you and I. That’s why we push and pull. That’s why we intrigue one another, whilst getting annoyed, all at the same time. That’s why it hurts. Because the love’s there, but it lays in the middle ground we can never find. Our contentment eluding us, tauntingly so. We sense its presence, yet have never quite been able to grasp onto it long enough to truly believe it exists.
So now I lay awake in the darkness, with your words softly repeating in my mind, matched with the vision of that look upon your face, when you held me in the water, as I panicked and flailed. It was the look of somebody who’d suddenly fallen in love and given in to a moment, that would soon pass and be lost to many more that weren’t as beautiful. I still question when it will end. When sleep will return and bring dreams of someone else. Someone new. Until then, I lay drowsily thinking of you.