We thought our love to be one for the ages that the stars themselves beat for us that the heavens played and the angels sang for us
The beating heart that is the universe – time’s accordion – contracting and expanding its pockets little Nows in their little trajectories, present everywhere and one of them once ours for a lifetime
Oh foolish young love
Perhaps these are the final thoughts of a dying starman being torn apart shredded memories of a lover twisted infinitely thin into cosmic spaghetti Do you remember the first time we went for Italian together?
or maybe I’ve already gone beyond that black veil how to process such a notion? that you are inaccessible to me and I am lost to you forever
And I promised you the heavens Oh foolish starcross’d love
In his sleep he could hear her gentle breath, always verging on becoming the quietest snore. As cute as ever, he almost thought, in his sleepy stupor. He being Daryush, he thought. And she being…
His partner, his companion, his mate. She stirred, seeming to sense his hesitation. Daryush reached over to her and sloped a comforting arm across her chest. He moved his head closer to her pillow and drank in the smell of her hair and neck.
I love you.
He tried to fight back against the crashing waves. What was her name? Wave after unrelenting wave. Love had no name, the reply eventually came, and with that he, Daryush, rolled back into his slumber, pulled under the current by her sweetest scents. Through the cool night, enveloped in the mutual warmth, their tangled limbs no longer moved, but for the bobbing up and down of each breath.
First light broke through the curtain weakly, loosening the spell’s effect upon Daryush for a moment. He could see her shape better now, his love’s. He retracted a naked leg and she turned to embrace him. Again he fell. Deeper into her heat. Daryush tried to remember the colour of her eyes as he drifted away once more, forgetting as he did so all the wonderful details of her face that he so professed to love.
And so it went all through the early morning. One would wake in a daze and the other would reel them back in with words of honey, before up could become up and down resolutely stayed down again. Their sweaty entanglement of bones was arranged in a different configuration each time Daryush opened an eye. Where one human began and another ended seemed… open to interpretation.
Seven o’clock. Stay. You don’t need to go. Eight o’clock. There’s no work today. Nine o’clock, ten. Let’s stay like this; together forever. Eleven. Forever. Could we? Could an embrace so warm and loving sustain us for two lifetimes? Would it nourish our bones and fill our bellies or were they, we, delirious?
The high sun burnt through the net curtain and cooked the small bedroom. Daryush was parched. I have to get up now, it’s time. The woman in his arms, the love of his life looked away, despondent. I’ll be back, he promised her.
This might be the last time. Her words hurt his chest because he knew them to be true. Every night his perfect vision of her grew fuzzier, blurrier around the edges. Daryush sat up to an elbow and shook the last of his sleep from his head. Why did you never come for me? Her voice faded away, into a corner of his mind.
And Daryush woke up alone, remembering all at once all the mistakes he had never made and the perfectly empty score-sheet he had to show for it.
abdulj. 