He made me remember how to love. That’s why I could never betray or hate him. They say never bite the hand who feeds you. And what about the hand who feeds your soul? I know sometimes it ain’t right. He had his secret and I had my secrets. Lots of secrets, which I think made us love even harder in the minutes of midnight. But damn I didn’t know that someone could hold them so heavy and deep, till when they came out, ties undone and you’re looking at that person like… who the hell are you? I’ve had that moment with him. Many times. But like I said. He taught me how to love again. I didn’t want him to come into my life. No one ever invites a storm, no one ever anticipates a car crash. Everyone feels it afterward only. At least those who survive.

He was so damn lovely the first time he came into my view. I remember thinking to myself, finally, the rumors were true. You could find someone and agree with every inch of skin, every strand of hair, every flick of the wrist which belonged to another human being. My fucking prototype. Welcome home, it felt like when he started to speak. Although that’s not what he said at all. What’s your name? I felt like he was messing with me. My name? It’s me dummy, the person who you’ve been waiting for all your life. Corny, I know. What do you expect? I follow in the footsteps on Juliet.

But we were strangers stranded on a deserted Dream with plush pink walls, sand beneath our feet, and cherry blossoms falling from the sky. No, not even that. Here we were just perfect strangers in a hallway and I had fallen for him before he even spat the word, Hello.

Hell, he had me at blink.

xoxox

Lindsay Reva

He walked out into the morning sunlight and wondered what it would be like if one day someone took the sunlight away. The warmth on his face made his skin tingle and he closed his eyes so that he could appreciate the moment more. When he finished imagining himself in a cold dark room, locked up with a cellmate named death, he opened his eyes and smiled at what just being alive and free had given him.

She stepped out of her car into the pouring rain. Instead of running into the house like a normal human being, she raised her chin till she was face to face with charcoal rimmed clouds and an onslaught of falling raindrops. Eyes closed, she liked the way each drop hit her eyelids like a little fairy’s kiss. Over and over, smothering and sweet. Thank you, God, she whispered to the sky thinking about how lucky she was not to be 6 feet under, not to be one of the others who lived life without living at all. The zombies. Her palms opened up and her arms raised higher and higher. A neighbor peeked out the window and wondered if he was seeing an angel about to fly into what seemed like a neverending storm. He shut the blinds and blinked away his belief. The angel brought down her arms and smiled into the coldness that kept everyone locked up. Drenched and lovely, she walked slowly to her home where she would undress and soak in a rose-colored tub, candles lit.

Hold me, he whispered to his lover. She couldn’t understand why he always needed to be held. He couldn’t understand why she could bear to be apart, especially when they were so much better as a whole. Yes, baby. And she held him. Not for her sake, but for his. He would wonder months later when they separated if his touch was torture to her or if she meant it when she said she couldn’t live without him. But she was dead. Just like that. And so his thoughts tormented him. Did I love her enough? Did she love me like I loved her? If she hadn’t died, would they have held on to each other for the rest of their lives? Fucking bastard drunk driver. He went to a priest and poured his heart out. First in drops, then in gallons. Still, his pain wasn’t empty and still, the priest never made him feel better. He tried to turn to God directly but he heard as loud as cannons in an empty hall the haunting sounds called silence. He walked out of the church and looked up into the sky. Tears never came. He took one full breath and life entered into his lungs. His blood continued its flow. His heart ran steady, thudding to the invisible beat of healing. He walked slowly like a soldier back into the norms of everyday life.

Do you love me? She said it so sweetly that it was easy for him to say yes. She was always sweet with him. That’s why he kept her around. No other woman would do such a thing after she caught you in bed with her best friend, after one night you drank too much and pulled her by the hair for no reason at all, after her test results came back positive even though before had been negative. She was sweet and so he called her his sugar. Sugar looked into her lovers lightning blue eyes and wanted nothing more than to kiss every inch of his body and lay her head in the crook of his neck. Exactly where she belonged. She didn’t care that her parents hated him and her friends wanted to kill him. Because even though they judged easily not one of them could give her what he gave her in one simple look. Not one of them would fill her heart, her being, her entire existence with the electricity when his force field surrounded her. Love. She was utterly in love with him. So in love that she didn’t give a damn when he wandered to the others, nor did she care when he had his hiccups. No one was perfect. Only God understood this love, only the angels up above would be jealous of my hearts notions. She believed with all her soul that she had found the one true thing that would bring her life meaning. She found love, and tainted or not, love was love.

He looked down at the words on his paper. Dear Emilia. Writing her name made him remember the last time he held her in his arms. Naked on the bed she sat in his lap and for a split second, he wondered if they had been the same being in a past life. One molecule split and separated for one eternity. Thank God I finally found you, lover. Now, but too late. He thought of the way her hair smelled and how soft her skin was. Her laugh and how bright her eyes shone even in the darkness. It was perfect, just like the way she touched him as if she owned the blueprints to his pleasure. My beautiful heart holder, I need you. He had been sitting at his desk for 30 minutes now and had only been able to write those two words which he replayed over and over in his head. Dear Emilia. When they made love her name rolled off his tongue like a flower blooming, like a sun rising, like a sea bathed in moonlight. He wanted to pour out his heart to her and tell her that this was it. This was finally fucking it. That he would leave his wife and children and together they would start their lives together. Laugh and hold hands in public, unguilty lover marks, free, absolutely free. Dear Emilia. He reread the two words and looked up from the paper into the fireplace that warmed his office. He could hear a door open somewhere in the house and heard his wife yelling his name. Shut that woman up. He would write the letter to his lover and tell her that he would now and forever be hers to have. After this there was only happiness, together. Dear Emilia. He looked down at the two words and tried to put his final decision into words that made sense, words that gave him courage. Upstairs he could hear his daughter laughing or crying. He just needed the first sentence and the rest would flow. The perfect sentence which would be the beginning of forever. Dear Emilia. Slowly a pit grew in his stomach and the words started to blur. He realized that it wasn’t the words, but instead tears that fell from his eyes. His wife screamed his name again, and as a reflex, a soft sob escaped his mouth. He looked up into the fire. Blazing with accusations. Dear Emilia. Quickly and without another thought, he wiped his eyes and torn the two-worded paper from its note pad, crumbled it in a ball and tossed it into the flames. Dear Emilia. He rose from his chair and left his bravado behind to answer his wife and check on his daughter.

Xoxox

Lindsay Reva

She had placed it in the palms of her hands, measured it from every angle, peered at it from afar, turning one simple thing into a fixation that was now her most treasured possession. A memory.

In 5 years, something would happen, a simple trigger and again the fixation would reoccur, into a continuous taste of pleasure settling on the tip of her tongue. In another 10 years, she would be walking in the park and a sensation of the light licking her face would reach her mind, again bringing her back to the memory which she tried to forget, but never tried enough. She wondered after years and years passed, whether that simple memory was one at all or instead something she had dreamt in the early hours of the morning when she lay half awake and half in bliss.

Somewhere in the faded pages of a book she had once read, one moment could last forever. How naive it made her feel now when she remembered reading it for the first time and thought, bullshit. But now she knew. Bullshit was real.

One second was all it took for her to understand that she had finally lived through the moment. Tattooed heart. Cut deep, Signed and sealed with a blood oath. Never the same. Meeting a soul and without knowing what her soul was made up of, understanding without a doubt that her soul and his soul were exactly the same. Not one particle or essence different. Every curve and flow, that of the same.

She sat at a cafe. The cafe which she had breakfast and black coffee every day for the past two years, alone. When one day a gentleman came and sat right next to her, looking her in the eyes with an apologetic smile. She smiled back automatically even though she wanted to do nothing but ask this man what the hell he wanted.

You. She hadn’t even asked the question before he spoke. I want you.

Her normal mental process didn’t slow or speed up. Instead, the words which left her lips had a balance of equal clarity and precision. Follow me. So he did. She led him, and they held hands as if it were the thousandth time instead of the first. Neither felt awkward. Neither felt the urge to fill the silence. They just were. When they reached her bedroom she lay on her stomach on the white bed while the rest of the room remained engulfed in brilliant sunlight. Beams fell on her and turned her chestnut hair the color of rose gold. She closed her eyes when she felt his weight beside her and his hand slide down her spine. She wanted him to kiss her. He answered by silently brushing her hair to the side and placing his lips on her skin. In a clean white room, they were the only chaos.

She had met her match and it lasted less than eleven minutes.

After, she walked him to the door and they looked at one another knowing they would never see each other again. He thought she was beautiful and for the rest of his life would never forget how she looked in the white room filled with sunlight. In 20 years, he would still feel knots in his stomach when images of that day came into his mind. Her cinnamon-tinted lips and long eyelashes. She knew there would be no one else who could fill her emptiness and for the rest of her life, his smile would be a curse to her happiness. His dimples and almond buttered eyes.

Time had other plans though, and life would move on. Even if the memory didn’t believe in it.

xoxox

Lindsay Reva.