@ciarab4835

2 years ago

I told the waiter in passing how you mix different whiskeys you save over the years into one glass, and we laughed at the thought-I called you mad. I told the man in the market selling second hand vinyls that you still dance like a child to anything with a swing-I said you were the the messiest and most chaotic dancer I’d seen. The checkout lady at the supermarket down the road knows how hangry you can get, which is why I was buying a bunch of bananas, because I get hangry too-I called you a friend. I asked the delivery driver where he was from-I recognised your accent-he asked for your name. It was the first time I’d said it out loud in months, and I got goosebumps even feeling it on my tongue. I don’t think I’ll ever tell you how unfathomably and ridiculously in love with you I am, for reasons the both of us already know too well, in unspoken words and little glances. I told my mother, my sister, and my closest friends, when I felt I couldn’t keep it a secret any longer, but I have never said ‘love’. I have kept that word guarded and treasured, holding on the tiniest hope that my first true declaration of my love for you would fall on your ears first, if I ever had the courage to tell you how I feel. I have kept my love for you a secret, but with all the colour and madness and gentle chaos you have brought into my life, well it has been bursting out of me at the seams for the last three years, since the October night we met and something so beautifully familiar about the rhythm of your words made me want to hear them all, and I think I smiled at you that night and never stopped. My love for you was written on my face all along, only for the observant to recognise. I wonder if you ever did. However our story ends, whether it ever even begins, you have enriched every part of me with the genuine kindness in your eyes, the way you stop to say good morning to strangers-you are the most wonderful person I’ve ever met. I wonder if you notice how you sometimes clap your hands when you laugh, how they dance while you tell a story. I’m coming to terms with the fact that I will not be the one you choose, or, at least, I’m trying to. But for as long as I can’t help myself from telling strangers how beautiful you really are, well I don’t think I’ll stop choosing you. Do you ever tell strangers about the braid in my hair, my yellow, battered converse? Do you tell people that, according to you, I’m ‘too English’? Did you tell them about the time I won the board game we played with my family only because we spent the whole time cheating, and no one noticed? Have you told anyone about the way I fall asleep anywhere, many times sitting next to you? Do you tell people about the peppermint tea you made me one morning without asking, because you knew it was my favourite? I leave the teabag in, you take yours out. I told the man at the music shop how beautifully you play guitar, but would never admit it. You sat behind me on the sun-soaked afternoon that I played Chopin’s Romance-Larghetto on the piano, recorded it on your phone and asked me to play the ending again and again until you hummed along, and then until I hummed along too, eyes shut. Do you ever watch that video? I only know how grateful I am that our paths crossed, even if for a short while, and I’ll never be the same. I am grateful for every single second, and I wouldn’t change a thing, I really wouldn’t. We were never truly strangers, were we? It was never in the cards for us, goodness knows we only see each other twice a year as it is, you go abroad to visit your parents as much as your circumstances allow, and anyone can see the warmth settle on your face when you talk about them. Your heart lives with them, your heart is back home, a thousand miles away. It’s only a matter of time before you move back for good. Every time we say goodbye, I never truly know if it’s the last time I’ll ever see you. And I might never see your smile again. We were not meant to be. So, because I have been far too cowardly to say any of this to your face, here are my declarations. This is the lens I see you through, and I love you, I love you, I love you. I love you. I think I always have.

13 |