I think I’m scared of being in love.
Of falling heart-first, knees weak and lips chewed red into the world of someone else. The world where I lose all control; where my pulse quickens, sweat slips and pupils dilate at the mercy of a total stranger.
A time where nights are spent suspended in cocoons of flaxen fantasy, wildly playing co-author to the words of wanderlusts, as pens scrawl misty letters across pages like first kisses fluttering against anonymous lips.
With no poetry, no pretence: just boy to girl, all butterflies and lips.
Yet, when I stop dreaming and type out reality, the words tumble out of my mouth like boulders, heavy and sharp.
The feather-wisps of innocence are lost as letters clatter out from beneath the keys, as little vowels and consonants dance in lines and they try to make sense of each other; stumbling, giggling and nervous.
That’s the version I don’t want to write.
The truth after the first flutter; where it turns swift and clinical. The version with styrofoam cups and liquid that swills cold in dry mouths, where tables are tapped with empty touches to fill the wasteland of silence.
I’m frightened that I’ll become the girl who tortures herself remembering every minute spent together. Every awkward breath, every fumbling touch; every flicker of “I can’t believe we’re actually doing this.”
I don’t want to do that.
I don’t want to lie scrolling through messages that should have been forgotten, knowing that fleeting syllables of care are all I have left, where months on I’ll still be looking over a never-to-be-continued story, aching for snatched minutes I know won’t be shared again.
And I’m scared because I can feel myself falling, and I can’t let myself become a memory of “that girl you used to know.”
A memory of days spent skating over ice as I cross dates waiting for the time when our relationship becomes nothing more than an anecdote coughed over whiskey and smoke, watching as our love extinguishes itself into ashes.
Because if I fall, I want you so desperately to fall with me.
I want you to be hand-in-hand with my heart: the heart that runs to the alter before it can walk and dreams for too long before it has even opened its eyes. The heart ignited in full colour and bright light.
The heart that has fallen for fallacy, fantasy; for a fool.
And I know it’s too late because I’m already under, clasped tight against the night and swirled in webs of sweat and sheets, fallen hopelessly and irreversibly for the you that many girls want, that many girls have had, and that many girls have yet to meet.
The you who steals kisses and hearts, never stopping to catch his breath.
The you who is always the heartbreaker, and never the heartbroken.
And I don’t want to be in love just to be your next heartbroken girl.
