This is an elegy: a tale of love, I think

I dream of fireflies as I touch your skin. That you're breathing so close to my breath feels like my body is expanding out of its shell. This is the cosmos breaking it's boundaries to envelope us. I mean just lying near you makes me see better.

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pixabay

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But it's night and the rain is pouring, though the sky seems clear like glass crashing against the floor. Everything sings in the night, especially our silence as we stare at each other. We've said everything that needs saying and maybe love will not be enough to carry the weight this time. I don't know but I'm holding you, even if it is this one time.

Your bags are on the floor. Your flight is by 9am. Europe has opened its embrace for you but I knew you first, I say to myself. I knew you before the applications, the acceptance, the scholarship and your dad calling you an idiot for choosing me over a promising career in tech.

We've wept our tears and now the sky carries the remaining but to forget is easy. It is nostalgia that will sit with us and whisper continuously like a leaking faucet into the hours. I wonder how long it will take before the smell of my skin will fade and my smile will become a soft light in the distance. I don't know what you are thinking as you look at me with those tender eyes. I just listen to your heart rate and it tells me everything.

Please stay. Let's lie here forever listening to the rain against the pane. Let's watch winged insects slam themselves in florescence crazed delight against the wall. Let's stiffen into stillness here, eternal as a sculpted flower. I want to hold you like this forever.

It is 7.45am. It is time to leave. You retract like a scab from an old wound. I can almost see the filmy flesh still reflecting the pink brown beneath. This will hurt, I whisper. You smile and nod. Your words have left you. The poetry has become voiceless. Please stay. You shake your head and pick your purse and phone. I get up and pick up the bags. I look around the room to see if anything is left. There's only the soft impression of our bodies like two fingers in the shape of peace. I almost weep.

The drive is quick and silent. We smile sometimes to kill the tedium of loss. At the airport, I begin to shake. At the entrance, your sister is waiting. She smiles at you and frowns at me. I snicker. Your father appears, talking on his phone. He hugs you and walks off still talking on his phone. Your eyes follow him and your sister's eyes glitter in anger. The man barely notices you too as he slips into the backseat of his car and kisses his newest wife.

We walk to departures, and watch you flicker then disappear behind a door. Out in the skies is where you live forever in my eyes. I turn to see your sister staring at me as if seeing me for the first time.

"Would you like a drink?" She asks.

What else am I to do? Yes. Let's have a drink.

We drink all day and at night in my flat, she takes off all her clothes. When I open my eyes, there is twenty missed calls from you. I turn to see your sister smiling and running her hand over her stomach. She is two weeks pregnant. Nostalgia will make me strong enough I thought. I wonder what you are doing these days now? Every once in a while I look at your number. You didn't even come for the wedding.

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Hello it's been a while since I reflected on fiction here or anywhere else. How have you all been? 🤍🤍