Angel

You stood at the end of my bed with the softest smile I’d ever seen grace a person’s face.

“How did an angel like you get to be part of my life? Tell me that story.”

“I don’t think that you’ll enjoy this story.”

“But I enjoy you.”

When we had met I had just celebrated my sixteenth birthday and he was halfway through his twenty-first year. I had always been told that I was mature for my age. He told me beautiful little whispers, he told me these lies about how I was lovely and a drug and everything that he had ever known. I listened to him, and I knew, I knew, that what he said was true.

He was a ray of sunshine for me as I was only just learning who I intended to be. He only hurt when we fought, and when he touched me it only burned for a second. When he kissed me I only tasted blood when our lips first touched. He only hid me from his friends because I was too young. At least, that’s what he said. He only coloured my skin blue when it was cold out. Or it was Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Or when the mood struck him - and then me.

“He left this on your skin?” You say this like it hurts you.

“He left everything all over me.”

I loved him. I really, really, really loved the thought of him. He gave me adventures in streets I’d known my whole life. Rewrote me for the second time. He took everything from me; he took my first kiss, my first love, my everything, and yet he gave me nothing. No smiles, firsts, no love.

He met her when I had lit on fire and burned inside out a million times for him. He said that she was the safe choice, the one that he needed for his parent’s, and briefly I thought, “A twenty-two-year-old who dates for his parents?” but then he kissed that thought away too. He told me that I was his sun though, the only thing that separates day from night. I believed him. I believed him on his engagement night when he shared a bed with me and not his fiance. I faltered when he asked me to stay with him, I screamed when he said he only loved me. He had had me fooled for four years now, and I loved him, why couldn’t he see that? Why couldn’t I believe that I was worth a man who loved only me? Who kissed only me? Who took me to meet his parents?

“How could you ever believe that you weren’t worthy of everyone’s attention, let alone one man?”

“I didn’t believe I was worthy of much for quite some time there, love.”

I think I cried most when she asked me to sing for the wedding. Partly because he had said that I had the voice of the angel. Partly because she believed I was her friend, and I hurt myself once because I knew that I hurt her. She wasn’t aware of him and I. He bought my silence with whispered words and caresses.

He told me that we had to stop seeing each other while he was kissing me. I didn’t hear him for a moment, and he shook my shoulders. He told me his wife was pregnant and I was becoming a thorn in his side, I didn’t tell him about the knives he’d dug into my flesh. He left me then, and I spent six months trying to figure out what was wrong with me. Then I fixed myself. I built myself.

“Then I found you, and you are a crown. I found myself and I found you, and you are my moon, you do not blind me, you enchant me.”