yet everything that touches us, me and you

takes us together like a violin’s bow

which draws one voice

out of two separate strings     

Rainer Maria Rilke

It’s late, moonlight touching her bare shoulders and arms, only a delicate material covering her body. Just some lace and cotton that almost reaches the ground. A fading memory of a summer that once filled her heart. Water brushes against her feet, small waves dancing around still warm skin.

“Don’t you think you should be wearing something more than that silly dress?”

She slowly turns back, light chestnut hair floating in the wind and gliding against her face. Eyebrows furrowing, but a small smile lingering somewhere on the edges of those lovely lips.

“I’m not as brave and reckless as I may seem.”

Her hand lifts and points to a place not far away from them, her fingers unnaturally red from the cold. Slowly, his stare shifts there, expression slightly surprised but both with a mucking manner of sorts. Eyes gazing at a thick long beige sweater with a pair of boots sticking out, buried deep in the wet sand.

“And that’s going to keep you alive after you casually freeze in the next few minutes?”

“Always so dramatic, Robert.”

“Excuse me?”

He asks, confused, and she shakes her head, waving a hand at him as if she wanted to get rid of something unwanted and bothersome.

“Just someone I knew. You seem to share common qualities.”

She moves her pained fingers beneath the collar bone, stroking a silver neckless with a beautiful pendant; old-fashioned warned out, and that seemed to belong to a past life that could no longer speak. Nothing lasts forever, until it comes again, in waves, countless ripples from just one gentle thought.

“You remind me of him.”

“Mmm, equally handsome?”

The wind picks up, and she shivers, but a lost smile lingers in the corners of her lips. She makes a few steps further into the ocean, the water moving just above her ankles. If you stand long enough in the freezing matter, it becomes warm to you. The strangest comfort of all, a blanket you never knew you wanted to have. Slowly, she lowers herself down, sitting with bend knees, her dress darkening as it sinks into the water, dancing around her thighs in an unsteady rhythm.

“What are you doing?”

His voice turns a bit worried, the easy tones gradually disappearing, though he still tries to keep it light.

“Searching for comfort in a forgotten world.”

She answers, not really listening to him, dipping her hands slowly into the water, and waiting for the burning of her skin to turn into heat that almost touches her insides and an empty set of lungs. Dislocated heartbeats, somehow still beating strong. Despite him, despite her and what happened after. It was not all lost, though. She still felt him in her cells, and though she could no longer touch him, he lingered somewhere deep within her, making a permanent home. As if here, but not in any place that she could pinpoint, seeming to be everywhere. In the morning sun, in the rustle of someone’s newspaper, in all the little things she couldn’t even count. There were times where she still would smell him on her skin or feel his warmth on the pillow next to her, radiating everywhere and embracing her as she found herself dozing off back to sleep, stroked by invisible fingertips that wanted to keep her safe.

“You really need to get out of there. I don’t want you on my conscience for the rest of my life. Come on, get out... please?”

She flinches as if she forgot he even existed. Reluctantly, she stands up, legs sore and stiff from the lack of blood movement in her pressed veins. She groans quietly, then looks back at him, in that dark grey, woolen coat. It’s unbuttoned, with a scarf wrapped around his neck a few times. Her stare turns challenging.

“And if I don’t? If I just stay here forever and wait?”

“Wait for what?”

His voice is barely a whisper, and she shakes her head, not hearing his question. He steps a bit closer and repeats the same words as a low sigh parts her pale lips just before any other sounds can form.

“For my stars to catch up with me. It’s been too long, and I need him... if I want to survive. I’m sure you understand.”

“I actually don’t, though I’m trying my best here, woman.”

She notices him getting closer, walking cautiously as if not to scare her. No point, really. It’s not as if she was going to move anyway. Not until a feeling in her guts told her otherwise. He doesn’t know that she has been coming here every day for the last three months. Two years after, she even let herself look at the ocean again.

“This isn’t a suicide mission, Robert. You worry too much.”

“Who the hell is this, Robert? Because it sure ain’t me.”

He sounds frustrated, but she knows that he’s frightened of what she might do. Slowly inhaling, she uncrosses her arms.

“I am all too aware of that. But there is something about you that... feels familiar. I’m not sure what exactly. Maybe it’s your looks, the way you talk, or all the tones in between that you try to hide for some reason? I don’t know, but it’s just how it is.”

Silence covers them for a moment, only the waves crashing around them, brave enough to shout freely.

“It’s Daniel, by the way.”

She blinks, heartbeat jumping a bit, an impossible memory invading the tired mind as she looks up at him, finally frightened of something.

What does the D on the locket stand for?

I have no idea. The woman that sold it to me at the antique store didn’t tell me. She only said that it has a long history and has landed into many hands as if continuously searching for its rightful home.

Wow, she really wanted to make her commission.

Such a disbeliever, love.

“Daniel?”

She repeats faintly, her voice barely breaking through the air that surrounds them.

“Yes.”

He comes behind her, his tones soft as he wraps the sweater around her arms. It makes her shiver but from so many more reasons that she could still think possible. She turns around and takes the kind hand, letting him guide her out of the water and into the dry land. For a second, she meets his stare and notices things that should no longer exist in this life, as the night sky reflects in his dark, almost liquid, caramel eyes.

“What are you looking at so intensely?”

He lifts his eyebrow amused, and she shakes her head, a bit dazed.

“At the constellations, I have known all of my life.”

Her voice turns into a soft whisper as she passes him by, picking up her shoes from the ground.

″...and I never knew I would see them again, yet here you are.”

“Pardon?”

He asks, distracted.

“Nothing, I said it’s really cold. Let’s get somewhere warm before I actually freeze to death and land on your dreadful list.”

“Fine with me, as long as you’ll remember my name from now on.”

“Oh, I think it would be impossible to forget. Trust me.”

She once more glides her hand against the necklace, feeling every dent and line, fingers no longer shaking.

“Good, because I’m more than shared qualities, you know.”

She smiles under the moonlight that breaks through the clouds, gliding their path as they walk next to each other, without any rush or troubled thoughts, taking their time on this strangest of nights.

_____

https://youtu.be/EiqUXVmKfrQ

So here we are set into motion

We’ll steal a car and crash in the ocean

You and I, caught in a fading light

On the longest night...

I was close to a fault line

Heaven knows, you showed up in time

Was it real?

Now I feel, like I’m never coming down

sinking in the currents, counting the waves against a cold body

wash away the sins in the dark, she said to me

at the stroke of midnight between fingertips, water cleanses

and I sink even deeper, the deepest ledge you can jump off

without losing yourself completely

the antagonist said there is not enough light between hollow spaces, but I know that water covers every surface of a hollow heart,

this used to be a warm place, this used to be home, veins heating the skin

and breaths of unsaid words filling our walls

even counted sighs can bring relief

and now, just ashtrays left on the ground, and fog against the surface of the mirror

rough tiles treated by time, and smooth in places you don’t want to touch, yet they feel so good

and here I lay in the shallow creek that covers my lips, enabling me to breath

you can but you don’t want to, lost in the passages of time, challenging your lungs to hold the whole world in their fragile cells, but you stay there, you stay till the fire touches your chest, as if a passionate lover, destroying you in the best of ways, but you want to feel, you so desperately want to feel,

so you let it, you let it consume you until you are just a state of useless strings raving in commotion, but it’s not that, not that, annihilation is not your final line, it’s just the beginning as it all takes you in, challenging your state, challenging yourself, sinking even deeper under the darkness that swallows the stars, points of light on your skin

guiding you on a path that causes you to stumble on harsh shards,

the black ink within your veins building patterns for all that still lives in you, it wants to live, doesn’t it? you know it does, that’s why you sink in the waves, child, that’s why you drown in the oceans of your own eyes, you drown in the cells that build her universe,

the surface of the mirror cracking and showing your flaws,

the marks that can still inhale beauty

but now, just ashtrays, just ashtrays on the ground, heavy smoke in the walls, coloring your soul in stained yellows and fractured greys, but yet you sink into it all, waiting to the last moment until every living matter of space burst out of your chest, and then you breathe, oh how you breathe, a newborn gasping for air that consists of flowers and thick sweet murmurs, swallowing unconditional love in its soft skin, and then you hear it, you hear it so well, the thing that was lost for so long, your core, your heart, ruby vessels hugging the world within you, and its’ there, it screams, it burns, it sings so loudly, and in that one moment when there is nothing, you’re lost, you’re lost but you are found,

I dare you to breathe

and it’s there, you know it is, just you and that moment when everything fades away,

just like... a skipping of a single heartbeat, constructed of time

there’s nothing else you need, and you realize you’re not drowning but flowing in between songs built of everything and nothing, perfection caused by gentle chaos, and suddenly, you’re the time, it runs through you, it breaths, but it doesn’t move for anyone else but her, she’s the reason

and somewhere in the back of your mind a distant whisper touches your skin, letting you know that the world still exists, that time still rushes forward,

and then your eyes open, refusing slumber that came from ice and frozen hopes, it felt like snow, didn’t it? oxygen in space or the lack of it, and then you see it, noticing details, stains of matter within countless voids that were there before,

noticing the edge of the bathtub and the waves falling on the dirty tiles, how they cover the doors and sink into the purple rugs, dripping ceilings, and naked floors beneath your tender spine, yours and the house

and finally, yes finally, time and space cracks,

and it’s midnight touching the windows, and its the night resting on your eyelids and caressing that place behind your ears, always sensitive to touch, always, and it’s the sound of the wind and the creations sinking into you, sinking deep into you and washing away your sins, such beautiful scars they make, don’t they? the ones that only you can touch, rough to you in its own strength,

but so smooth to the one that sees you with soft light, but loves your shadows, despite how heavy you feel, despite how blind you became to the beauty of your structures, she sees it with her fingertips dripping of soul and honey,

with a heart that’s filled with space dust and gas, a tiny nebula resting in each of those craving particles, beating red, velvety dreams made from countless explosions, how clearly she sees you between the walls you build so well, pushing aways the layers of damaged skin, passing through the still bruised muscles and counting your ribs as if searching for the key that only you can give her

and it bursts again, red flashes of red and shimmering lights of flames, fireworks, feelings, yes, those fireworks and you, and it illuminates you, and you beg for release,

you beg the concrete parts of your heart to bleed again

and you beg your wanting soul to not hide crisscrossed thoughts, and there’s a scream, there’s a wail, there’s a roar, and you do it, you strip every vein and muscle, sliding open your ribs, you do it, you do it with pain and joy,

and you do you it, do you hear me?

you...

all the world goes quiet as you open your chest for her and despite every hurt part of yourself, that cries of fear and tattoed loneliness, you do it, you do it for her,

and in between all the chaos, you find your whisper and those gentle fingertips dripping of soul and honey, of the sun you always miss the most between snow and thick trees marking shadows, and all the space of faded light in between,

and suddenly the word home feels so good on your skin, and you’re breathing it, and you never knew, no, you never knew, that such a feeling could be a caress, a kiss that reaches your soul, a heart finally feeling warmth placed in the right hands, and you stand, and your legs shake and fingers slip against rusted porcelain, but you still stand, catching gravity within your bones, and your feet move, just one step at a time

and you feel everything shift slowly into new structures, you’re not whole, there will always be scars on those fragile veins, bruises on broken bones next to your core, darker parts of you that cry just the same as those embraced in soft light, but you’re standing, and there is a beating sound under your ribs, and a peaceful brightness withing that soul of yours that always searched for a home

and you inhale, and you’re here, and you exist,

you are here, and somehow, you survived, stronger than before, even when there are days when all you feel is weak, damaged, chewed roots mixing with the strongest lights of moonlit love and you

and now child...

I dare you to breathe

___