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The two of you, like headphone wires tangling, caught up in this something. A happy accident. A messy miracle.
You would soon learn that love made you worry, but it also made you beautiful.
Love made you Black, as in, you were most coloured when in her presence.
How does one shake off desire? To give it a voice is to sow a seed, knowing that somehow, someway, it will grow. It is to admit and submit to something which is on the outer limits of your understanding. But even if this seed grows, even if the body lives, breathes, flourishes, there is no guarantee of reciprocation.
Besides, sometimes, to resolve desire, it’s better to let the thing bloom. To feel this thing, to let it catch you unaware, to hold onto the ache. What is better than believing you are heading towards love?
You create a small world for yourselves, and for you both only, sitting on this sofa, looking out at the world which has a tendency to engulf even the most alive.
the seed you pushed deep into the ground has blossomed in the wrong season.
You don’t always like those you love unconditionally. Language fails us, always. Flimsy things, these words. And everything flounders in the face of real gratitude, which even a thank you cannot surmise, but a thank you to her also.
Like Baldwin said, you begin to think you are alone in this, until you read. In this instance, two books are being spread open along the spine, despite the fact you don’t remember some of these pages. She’s looking at you and there is nowhere to hide here, nowhere to go. An honest meeting.
Have you ever been afraid of what lies within you, what you’re capable of ?
Is that what love is? The feeling of safety? And here you are, safe in her presence, separated only by each other’s silence.
What you’re trying to say is that it’s easier for you to hide in your own darkness, than emerge cloaked in your own vulnerability. Not better, but easier. However, the longer you hold it in, the more likely you are to suffocate. At some point, you must breathe.
To give desire a voice is to give it a body through which to breathe and live. It is to admit and submit to something which is on the outer limits of your understanding.
It’s summer now, and you’re craving a simpler existence. You want to read. You want to write. You want to meet strangers for dinner, and not refuse another drink at another bar. You want to dance. You want to find yourself in a basement, neck loose, bobbing your head as a group of musicians play, not because they should, but because they must. It’s summer now, and you’re looking forward to worrying less. You’re looking forward to longer nights and shorter days. You’re looking forward to gathering in back gardens and watching meat sputter on an open barbecue. You’re looking forward to laughing
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to forgetting that, leaving the house, you might not return intact. You’re looking forward to freedom, even if it is short, even if it might not last. You’re looking forward.
She has swum out into open water, and it is not long before you join her.
You while away the evening together, doing nothing really, which is something, is an intimacy in itself. To not fill your time with someone is to trust, and to trust is to love.
She swims out into the open water and you join her.
It’s one thing to be looked at, and another to be seen.
It is like you both dived into the open water, but you have resurfaced
You know that to love is both to swim and to drown. You know to love is to be a whole, partial, a joint, a fracture, a heart, a bone. It is to bleed and heal. It is to be in the world, honest. It is to place someone next to your beating heart, in the absolute darkness of your inner, and trust they will hold you close. To love is to trust, to trust is to have faith. How else are you meant to love?
You have always wondered under what conditions unconditional love breaks, and you believe that betrayal might be one of them.
Multiple truths do exist, and you do not have to be the sum of your traumas.
You have always thought if you opened your mouth in open water you would drown, but if you didn’t open your mouth you would suffocate. So here you are, drowning.
