we were seven, dust played in the lights shining through the blinds and we watched the sun bend at our fingertips. we painted our walls with sunflowers and rocket ships, thinking that someday we'd be touching the stars, watching the galaxy bend beneath our touch.
we were eight, you were a boy with wild brown hair and a missing tooth that showed every time you dared to crack a smile. i was composed of my mother's ruby red lipstick and interstellar galaxies flecked across my face- my mother called them freckles, I called them nonsense. we stayed up way too late in search of the moon, only to realize we were on the wrong end of the lunar eclipse.
we were nine, the first time death shot us a careless glance, the first time we realized that life wasn't going to flex like plexiglass underneath our mortal touch, the first time we realized that the sky cracks like your smile with raging thunder and ravaging lightening turning midnight to midday for the briefest and most magnificent moment. i believe it was also the first time that we were shoved on the playground, chased around by little kids with rancorous mouths that released words like rabies, the first time our flaws were under a microscope for an entire sea of humans to observe. the first time we were vulnerable in our entirety for the prodding and the demented.
we were ten, i thought a boy from down the road was making me sick only to realize that my mother called this love, only to realize there wasn't a cure for this cancer-like tumor that effected the heart. the brain. the lungs. the entire human system was a ravaged victim to love and the parasitic boy barely even noticed to see the effect upon the host. i was the host. the parasite with the bright blue eyes told me that he was a knight in shining armor and he didn't think i was a princess worthy of his saving. it is then that you told him that saving was the last thing i needed. then you told him to fuck off.
we were eleven, though closer to the stars they somehow felt farther away. little did we know that our imaginations were disintegrating by popular opinions and what our teachers continuously told us, a difference between facts and fallacies that we never wanted to know about.
we were twelve, sinking into some type of everlasting quick sand made up of tragedies and slithering truths that we are surrounded. we are out numbered. we are two vs. the world and no matter how many times your father yelled at us, we would always tell ourselves that what lie behind the mountain.. it was worth it. we forced ourselves to believe that no matter the struggle, we would someday be released form our confinements and we'd live amongst the stars. little did we know that your father may have been the most prominent monster, he was not the only.
we were thirteen, our hearts were an opened box and we were handing out free samples. you were handing out flowers to the pretty girls and i was waiting for the knight in shining armor to stop staring at me, because growing curves and watching my freckles fade did not make me any more of a damsel in distress. there is a difference between wanting to save and wanting to be saved, both equally wrong in a way.
we were fourteen, trying new things, listening to music that broke our eardrums like our hearts during the summer nights and we did not let anyone slow us down. we were full speed ahead towards adult hood, to relentlessly excited to stop and take it all in. a flying blur through our eyes as colors mixed and a canvas of colorful shit became our background. little did we know that there is no rewind button on life. we weren't expecting to sink into adulthood, never to return to neverland.
we were fifteen, people were thrusting our hopes and dreams into our hands. telling us the sky was the limit when the moon was conquered, their screeching voices told us over and over that all we'd ever be was human. and we wanted to be more than human, didn't we?
we were sixteen, you totaled your moms car when you insisted the speedometer could go farther than our love. we were.. in love? I hadn't noticed until you lie in the hospital bed telling me that every sustained injury was because of every sustained thought running through your chemically-cleaned mind, all about me. how i was your inevitable muse in a world of falling art. we were falling art.
we were eighteen, you asked me to run away with you that one day underneath the cherry trees and the deep scalloped moon and you ignored my pleas for you to stay when i said i couldn't go anyway. we had lives, we had jobs, we had things that kept us tied to the ground. how was it so easy for you to snap those priorities? were they as flimsy as the streamers you hung yourself for your going away party?
we were nineteen, separated by time and space and love and black lace, your hands burned other lovers and my heart burned those around me, a bitter consequence of staying tied to the ground- like a balloon victim to gravity. why would they tell us the sky is the limit when gravity rules the world?
we were falling out of love each second, each day, until my name was only followed by the briefest memory.
but it still made you smile, didn't it?
- FALLING IN AND OUT OF LOVE
[or in which two bound together fall in love, only for one to reach the sky.]
