Fran

Before I ever loved you, I liked you. As a friend, as a person, as someone whose phone number I wanted to memorise. That was the start of it all, the beginning of the fall.

It’s a different form of cuteness aggression called cuteness provocation. I’m so fond of you I have to piss you off a little.

One lifetime doesn’t seem like enough to love someone right. Maybe that’s why sometimes we meet people who feel like a home we’ve come back to after a long time away. Maybe souls carry love through death.
Maybe every love story is just a ghost story with a happy ending.

[Unsent text. 10.06 am] I’m sorry I kept stalling at dinner. I wanted to keep you here longer. Until morning, maybe. I wanted to see what you would look like sitting across from me in the kitchen under the morning light. I bet the sun would frame your face just right.

This thing between us—writers call it poetry, romantics call it chemistry, sceptics call it tension. I don’t have a word for it but the way my name sounds when it slips past your lips is awfully close to love.

‘I don’t know if I should kiss you or kill you,’ you say after I push one button too many. But it’s not one or the other. A kiss from you will steal the air from my mouth, rob the breath from my lungs.
So take your time, make it a slow death. I want to enjoy it while it lasts.

It’s simple, really. If attention is the beginning of devotion it is only because to love is to notice, and to be loved is to be remembered.
You haunt my every thought.

It’s awkward between us: you know what my lips feel like against yours and I’ve mapped the curve of your waist with my fingers. It’s not this shared knowledge that makes it awkward; it’s having had a taste and realising we want so much more.

It’s not a fight. We don’t do that, right? But you’re good at ignoring me and I’m good at staying mad. It’s not a fight, but this silence still feels like a battleground. What do I do? I love you too much to let go and you love me too much to let me.

It’s not ragebait, it’s foreplay. Keep up.

‘Am I worth the mess?’ i wonder, and you press a kiss to my temple and say, ‘You’re not a mess. Just a little stormy, and I’ve always liked the rain.’

‘Why do you love me?’ You ask quietly, a little confused.
And I don’t know who gave you the right to say it before I do, but it pisses me off.
‘I don’t,’ I lie. ‘I don’t like you much at all.’
What a silly question. Would you ask a plant why it bends towards the sun?

You’d have to be a masochist to fall in love. You’d have to be crazy, to be willing to fall on your knees and bare you neck to someone, to tell them to take a bite, to take it all.
You’d have to be stupid, or maybe just stupidly brave.

Don’t ask me what I want. I just want you, sunkissed from afternoons spent together pulling weeds from the flower beds. I want you sleepy in the mornings, drinking tea from the ugly mug I spun in pottery class. I want one dog, maybe more. I want a decade of this, or four.

Our voices get softer when we speak to people we like. Love coats the tongue like honey and makes everything sound sweeter.

Sometimes I disagree just to watch you argue your point, stubborn and flushed and so alive with the need to prove me wrong.
You look good enough to kiss, so I do. And I may lose the argument, but I win you.

‘Are you hungry?’ You ask, rummaging through the fridge.
My eyes make the journey south from the elegant curve of your neck to the sweet dip of your waist and the generous slope of your back, traveling the length of your legs, so many kisses long.
I say: ‘Starving.’

Sometimes I wonder why I bother writing down words you are never going to read. But then I remember that’s the point.

‘I like you so much,’ I think.
‘You’re such an idiot,’ I say.

Sometimes I reach for you just to make sure you’re still there. Daydreams tend to disappear when you blink.

There’s a side of you nobody gets to see but me. The uncut version, unpolished and raw. The one that doesn’t have to be in control or keep itself so tightly leashed. The one you think is bad.
But you should know you’re cute even when you’re mad.

‘You’re staring,’ you say, hiding a smile. ‘It’s annoying.’
And it’s true; I’m committing you to memory. I don’t want to miss a second of you.
But I don’t say that. I say: ‘Funny. Every time I look at you, you’re already looking back at me.’

Gentleness is such a precious thing. It requires so much strength to choose the kindest words, and say them softly. To love with grace, both yourself and others and the world around you. To keep your heart open. To not let this harsh reality turn your soft corners into spikes.

Here’s me with a bleeding gash on my heart and you rushing over to ask, ‘Who hurt you?’ so innocently, so sweetly, your fingers wrapped around a blade you don’t realise you’re holding.
‘I did. I walked into the knife,’ I say, because it’s not your fault you can’t love me back.

Didn’t mean to always gravitate towards you, to orbit you, to linger. To find reasons, silly ones, to be near, to touch you. Unfortunately, gravity has less of a hold on me than you do.

I slide my arms around your waist from behind and say, ‘You smell nice,’ as I bury my nose in the place where you neck meets your shoulder, pressing a kiss there. I can’t see your smile but I know it’s there when you say, ‘You mean I smell like you.’
I do. And isn’t that lovely?

Sometimes to be loved is to be missed even when you just stepped out to buy eggs.

This love could save me or it could ruin me. It could fix me just to break me again.

‘You came?’ you ask.
— ‘You called,’ I say.
But you didn’t even have to; I was already on my way.

There’s a look of love, of fondness. It’s a subtle softening of the eyes, a gentle curling of the lips that dimple the cheeks. It makes it impossible to hide away the feelings you can’t make your mouth say.