Matthew

"I love you, so so much" he smiled into the duvet smelling the remnants of our mixed scent. It was like tasting a summer's day, soft breeze upon the horizon or the kisses splayed across his chest.

"I love you more," a smile tearing my cheeks open, burning them a brighter crimson that the picks at his neck.

"Kiss me"

"Wake up"

Pushes and shoves in my blue duvet, he kept hitting me atop my skull as though he wanted to trace it on paper. Or rather trace the cracks he nearly made.

"Five more minutes"

He hadn't even kissed me yet and that idiot had to wake me up, I felt disgust pinch my stomach at the thought of my dreams reflecting a desire I had in a chamber of my soul.

"No, you'll be late then I'll get in trouble for not dropping you off,"

I rolled my eyes, tasting bone marrow with how long the white of my eye teased his gestures. Little did he know a fuck was something I was incapable of giving, especially in situations concerning his idiotic, brainless self.

Sounds of spring against my cheek, they tasted like a hatchling. An icy yet warming bite of wind.

What was he doing I would wonder so often tracing his footprints and wondering if his cologne had ever changed. If he had now a lavender or peppermint, was it vanilla that he placed atop his gum. That morning or the next.

Was I drowning those days, yes. Someday it was in his scent engulfing me the other the guilt of his aftertaste, tangy and sour to the tongue. Not blue nor mellow in crimson but just sour as his looks and the gazes we shared across a hallways or church service.

Saturday, I needed to clear my head. Reminisce, in blue yellow and black. Like my canvas that I had discarded time ago along with the subject of art even though my passion had remained in paintbrushes.

A park, Our park. My feet led me, my toes gripped at concrete then wet grass. Go to the swings it commanded and I was but a servant to my wants and needs. Until I saw him,

Lips atop lip and cherries, tasting her entirely. Allowing hands to skim and gaze across her frame.

He was kissing her.

Or that is all I saw until tears brimmed my sockets I teared up before I could clench emotions by a fist, rock and boulder. He loves her doesn't he is all I thought tears cascading. Crashing, sniffles as I wanted to hold them in, turning red and blue in the face.

I ran away because I couldn't bare the thought that that blonde could see me for who I was. See me as I had seen him, naked. Shivering at the sudden exposure.

The time flew faster than my limp feet, with pebbles engraved into their crevises. My eyes to the phone beside me in the darkroom. Four walls closed in offering more warmth than I had allowed myself to feel in months, cope.

To cope was to taste his cries muffled with my hitched breaths as droplets of iniquity touched my blushed chin. But my coping mechanism filled with rust and lacked oil those nights.

I cried so much that shuffles and words caught in my families oesophagus' fell on deaf ears. All I could wonder was if that interaction I had with a hint of mint being chewed after ginger to stop my cold and nausea was right.

Church barbecue.

They (as in adult with wine or rum) conversed with browning beef and chicken atop a grill.

"I can't believe they've made it legal"

It's was that year in which those who loved enough could be recognised as one under he law.

"Right, the serpents tongue must've persuaded him to do such a disgusting thing."

"Marriage can only happen between a man and a woman, not another man or worse the ones pretending to be a woman. These days if you wear a skirt and call you self a woman you are one. Disgusting."

Hums of agreement. I was half oblivious in the back, not so much but enough to pretend the sting of their words wasn't equal to the swatting of my hand. They said the food was too hot, never hot enough for my wandering hand and bleeding tongue.

He would search my eyes for approval, finding a fluttering stomach and heart sink each time. I would wonder why I wanted to touch him, push his hair to the side.

"Honestly, the end days must be near, with people making it seem like we are the ones in the wrong. As though slipping from bed to bed is fulfilling, or selling nude pictures instead of going to college like we did."

He lost interest, next picking up his phone to finish his tenth watch of Howl's moving castle as though this time it would gain new fruit for thought or the characters would become that much more interesting.

He heard their words but they never won his aimless gaze, whether he lost it on purpose so that they wouldn't reflect his boiling blood or not.

All I saw was the reflection of an entrancing orchestra and green grass upon the hills.

His body twitched each time their tongues bit at the term LGBTQ like a vapour, they spat it in his face like a slur or pieces of chicken yet to be digested. Or that hotdog he had half-finished laying half-burnt some inches away.

"Why do you watch this all the time"

He smiled at me, ivy and lavender in his gaze.

"It's my comfort movie"

"Why do you need a comfort movie, " he laid it down after pausing it. Looked into me as though he was readying himself to explain quantum physics to a child, it's shocking how cocky a 13 yr old could be.

"Because little one, bad stuff can happen. You'll realise when you grow older, so having things that always make you happy can help you forget."

He would act so grown and adult as though teen wasn't the suffix he had only just grasped onto months prior, I thought. If only I had paid attention, taken his advice and found something that made me endlessly joyful.

Whether a movie, play, book : anything but the gaze and smile of lavender that blonde would rest upon the heart he grasped so tightly.

"You're not that much older than me"

"Well, I'm old enough, fool."

I scrunch my eyes, faked a grimace as though I didn't love the way he weaved words through his tongue and fingers. Especially for me.

He looked so... I don't know, I didn't then either. Preferring it to be the kindness he could radiate and pure passion.

"Do you wanna watch it with me, "

I stared straight, irises so cool that I smelt incense burning in them. Smile pulled down manually by my index and thumb, still not strong enough. I wondered what made me happier, his smile, scent or the fact I could ponder as to whether he would go out with me to the woods or something.

"Sure"

He left space for me to lay upon him, so that he could roll my strands in oiled fingertips. Grease and adolescence. Burned far more than any burger or chicken wing.

We would lay there, silent as crowds around us chatted. Savouring a Caprisun atop our buds.

Oh how I wish to go back.

Tears still fell, from mountain tops and tree branches hitting my bedroom flaw with a slight glisten. Hands held back cries like they did that night but this time the cries searched for solace in blue and red.

Why didn't he love me, why did I love him?

Why did I find him to be the only one I could fathom my hand-holding. Never a wife nor woman nor child I said I would have. Only ever his. Because he meant freedom to me, so much more than first loves and morning kisses.

I wanted to run in a field hand intertwined, but I was sat in the bathroom staring at insomnia, hatred, despair and love letters.

Why did I ever want him.

A tale not even me, now adult can answer. However, to love and lose is better than to have never loved at all. Or so they say.