It will happen in math class when the boy next to you touches your leg and electricity freckles your skin like fireworks. You’ll be holding your breath and hoping the people around you can’t hear your heart as it riots in your chest. And you’ll smile at him because he won’t be paying attention to anyone else and his closeness will feel foreign to you, but he will feel unnaturally familiar, like déjà vu and a new recurring dream.
His smile will return like dawn every time he sees you in the halls and your heartbeats will grow anarchical as you attempt to hide the light that spreads across your face, mirroring the happiness that spills from his own eyes.
He will give you compliments gift wrapped with words like baby and all the words you never cared for until they fall from his lips. And you will drop your standards in the same way he will end up letting your heart slip from his fingers because his eyes are the colour of sadness, and you so desperately want to show him what healing can taste like.
And then he will grow distant, like faded ink and wilting flower petals and you will chase after him with a lifeboat and a first-aid kit. And he will be your boomerang, always leaving and coming back until one day when the wind is too strong, and he does not deem you worth the fight.
Your favourite word will be stay and your biggest fear goodbye and he will be the reason you say them, over and over again, almost as a prayer. He will be gone, and you will be in pieces, your hands too unsteady to create a mosaic.
It will happen in eleventh grade when love looks like a boy with a broken heart and your greatest mistake will be letting him carve yours up, so it bleeds just like his.
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Edit: Story was republished to change cover image
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Comments (6)
That last line though 😮 You plot love like a map you know with your eyes closed.
Well-wrought! Most of my experiences with love seem to go somewhat like it does for the series of unrequited loves in Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream", so I can relate. Sometimes we must wonder: do we love the other or the fantasy we have about a relationship with the other? How can we love another before we even really know them, and how can we know them before we love them? The ever-revolving paradox of love.
This was sooooo freaking relatable! His eyes the colour of sadness. Chasing him with a lifeboat and first aid kit. Gosh I loved these lines so much!
I remember this kind of heartache from those years. The only difference was that I didn't have anyone chasing after me until my sophomore year of college, & that was only because some mutual friends had asked me to help her with her studies as she was having trouble adjusting to her first year of college. Still, the heartache you've expressed here, Poppy, easily transcends those differences & resonates thoroughly with me.
Oh man this was wrenching! So full of all the feelings that are so intense at that age. Thanks for bringing me back to it. And also, how dare you? Lol 😆
Well written and sad! Hope you get your heart back!!!!! 💙❤️♥️ very good!