small hours

When he's fast asleep. That's the best time to sneak out of bed and tiptoe to wherever it is you can write, because writing to him is not just another intelectual exercise, a  childish game of flattery. It's harder than any other task you've grown accustomed to performing; it's treacherous terrain, one where words could easily mute the certainty that only mended souls can share. You know you've wasted too many words already. The prose you write now must be extra gentle, extra careful, for you need to be sure it won't fall on deaf ears or escape a blind eye. He'll either hold these words dear to his heart or they'll have meant nothing at all.

But before you make up your mind and actually get out of bed, you watch him in his sleep, breathing rhythmically, oblivious to your nagging presence. You study his relaxed features, stroke the lines on his forehead, feel the prickly beard, concentrate on his fluttering eyelids. In your mind's eye, you try to picture the blue irises and even though your memory doesn't tend to fail you, it's impossible to devise that particular shade, so unique because you can see life glowing behind it, you can see home, shelter, future. And just then you wonder if he's dreaming, if you're ever in his dreams.

You resent not being his first and yet hope with every fiber of your insecure and miserable being that you're certainly his last. The past gnaws at your confidence. Despite your natural talent for nostalgia, you abhore the fact that he has a past and you weren't there. You talk to yourself in a reproachful tone; after all, your timeline isn't exactly short and untarnished. You'd expect more from a woman who'd been armed to the teeth against love and all the vulnerability it encompasses. If your heart was ever enclosed by a fortress, it's not supposed to go on doing giddy somersaults in your chest, betraying the hard face you've struggled for so long to put on. And yet... Wasn't this feeling exactly what you've always dreamed of, longed for?

You think he's mysterious in spite of all his brutal honesty. He will never feel it as you do, never see it through your eyes. It's not so much mystery as hunger for all he is, so much so that your craving never ends. You want to know it all, you turn into water so you can fill the void inside him and because he's never asked you to do so, you feel like an intrusive tourist when all you need is to be the landlord. You don't wish to possess for you've already learned that affection won't thrive in captivity. However, the barren lands of your body must be claimed, the whole lot of your heart taken. It is not his doubt that slashes through your soul, but rather his attempt to keep himself at a distance. You need no breathing room; you've breathed enough on your own. It's his breath you aspire to, his warmth to glue together all the loose and rattling pieces you've been too busy or too weak to pick up. 

You open your doors and windows and he is a downpour of life and feelings flooding the very core of you. He questions your certainties, highlights your faults, disagrees. He alters your conception of life and makes you believe in love and marriage and parethood and happiness, all of which, surprisingly enough, belonging in the same realm; he dares you to lose yourself and hope for more, always more. You wish you'd met him long ago, just so you could've had more time to make mistakes and then get them right, only not alone this time around.

So much wishing for... If you could go back in time, you would've been less stubborn and proud, not as skittish, definitely not so vain. You close your eyes and can still picture the abyssal ravine cracked between you. What if it hadn't been possible for you to reach out to each other and brace yourselves for the fall? But then again, what if you're simply the perfect human being for him and see all your aspirations mirrored in his eyes? Would it hurt too badly for you to put your shield down and matter of factly believe you've found him? Could you embrace it and at the same time not feel terrified of losing him? And would he be able to give himself to you, limitlessly, anyway?

Relationships are books written and told by four hands and two voices. In all likelihood they will fail and you'll find yourself mourning over an idealized story and unreal characters. Your relationship can't host any perfection especially because you're not building it alone; it is bound to break, to crack, to stain. You'll try not to let your heart sink for knowing both of you are painfully imperfect and fallible. And maybe, just maybe, the imperfection won't really matter, because you will be flawed and make mistakes together, side by side, as one.