pretty chapped lips : malum :

5.0

There are things you forget by choice. Others you forget because you are forced by your own body, your own mind, for your own good.

Mine was not quite so considerate.

I remember how we walked in the street, hand in hand, not saying a word. I remember the still of the night for twelve am, dark streets and lampposts the only source of light from above. I remember how he stared ahead, blank, devoid of any emotion as if he was once again just another painting that didn't quite end up right. But I wish I didn't. I wish I could say I remembered nothing, but I'm not quite so fortunate.

I watched the path that we walked along. Noticed the bits of gum and the shards of glass on the ground when we travelled under street lights. We walked along the quiet highway, devoid of any life. It was a long way home, and within the silence it felt even worse. But I didn't say anything, not for sometime, for fear of saying the wrong thing and making him run.

"You never spoke to me, not once. Not when you watched me from under that damn tree, not when I walked along the middle of the road, not ever."

His voice was soft, slow and low though his words held something it wasn't malice or anger. It was like he was stating facts, and he was. I never replied, but let him continue as I ran my thumb along his knuckles and wondered if they had always been just so rough.

"Ashton was the one that told me who you were. I asked him one day, saw you walking with your head down when we were by the gates. Said he thought it was Michael, shrugged his shoulders like it didn't matter and told me most kids thought you were weird. He said he felt sorry for you, because you were always so alone even with someone by your side."

There was a time I remember wanting to know how he knew me, but I didn't think he would ever say. Nor did I think he would ever really have a reason. I'm not sure even now what it meant for him to say that – why, so out of character he decided to let me in enough to tell me why. Part of me longed to know why he noticed me, the other, now, wishes he had never said a word on it. I didn't say anything, not even when our feet hit the road to cross, or even when he stopped me, just out of reach between to lampposts in the centre of the street.

"Dance with me."

When he took my hands, I looked at him and I didn't expect what I saw. Because he was smiling, and I didn't know why.

I don't know why.

"I don't dance." I tried to tell him, fingers laced together as I made to pull away.

But he just laughed, and it hit me how alive he seemed. His head tilted back, lips forming a smile so wide it made me wonder if I was missing out on the punchline as he moved an arm to circle my waist.

When I said I didn't dance, I meant it. Because I'm uncoordinatedandawkward with two left feet despite the fact I can carry a rhythm my body simply isn't made for dancing to a beat. But he smiled at me and told me it's okay, 'I don't either,' and the light in his eyes made me ignore the taste of smoke that tinged the air with every word past his lips.

There was no music playing, but I couldn't find it within me to care. Because, for once he was here instead of there. There wasn't a sea of tarmac that neither of us dared cross, and he wasn't stuck within himself with cloudy eyes and short words for replies.

So, we danced.

His arm around my waist, my own around his neck, hands clasped tight between our chests as we swayed in the street lights because he wanted to dance and I'd give him the world if he asked.

His head rested against mine, and when he spoke, his breath hit my lips and I forgot how cold it was without the jacket I forgot to pick up from the car. "Never love someone with everything you have," he had told me, "it will kill you in the end."

He didn't sound sad. In fact, part of me swore he had smiled when he spoke. I couldn't understand it – but at the same time, I knew exactly how he felt.

"I've picked my poison."

I remember looking at him, staring him in the eyes that had began to gain a light again, that glittered over the past few weeks and stopped being as dead as I always thought they were. I remember the sad smile on his lips that made my chest ache as I gripped his hand tighter, the crunch of gravel and calls of party goers from behind ruined the silence. I remember wondering why he said that, but I never asked.

"And it's you."

I didn't know then how ironic those words would end up being. Because I didn't know then that when he kissed me, that he wouldn't stand in the middle of the road at one am ever again on a November night and kiss me with everything he had. Because I didn't know what I know now.

Because in those few seconds that his lips were pressed to mine, I wish I could say that they lasted a life time. I wish that with one kiss to the lips, with my hands gripping so gently onto his shirt that picked up with the wind, that we were lost in time. I wish that kiss made us slip into another world, one where it was just us. One where no one else mattered, no on else existed outside of that little bubble, that little world that existed sometime between twelve and one am, the world where we could dance in the street light and all that mattered was the fact his lips fit with mine like puzzle pieces – smooth and gentle, different and right.

But we didn't.

Because the world continued, time went on and I didn't know that moments later his hands would push against my chest until I stumbled back and fell like he did three years ago. And I didn't know that I would fall out of harms way on the same road he did that cut through the heart of the country that had already stopped beating. Because I didn't know that night I would hear the crack of bones like I thought he would the night he said goodbye.

Because that night, I didn't know the only sound to pierce the silence would be that of a useless ambulance siren.