It’s like some days you’re there and some days you aren’t. I remember seeing you when I looked outside my window and when I looked again, I realised it was only a cloud. How wonderful it would be to just float above the mess of people on the ground too busy to look up. But I find myself looking up more than looking ahead or behind because the sky doesn’t lie. When it’s angry, you can see its burning troubles showing up in grey. When it’s happy, it reflects what I’d imagine a newly painted nursery to look like after the parents couldn’t express their joy in any other language but colour.
When I think of you I see red. It seems so fitting – the colour of a rose, passion, lips after they’ve given into the hunger of spilling their secrets onto another’s tongue. The colour of caution. But why would we listen to caution when what we want is right in front of us, hiding in a bathroom stall, hands burning to dance on each other’s skin. I would have painted your whole body red that night.
Another cloud, only this one is shaped just like the beauty spot you have on your jaw. I jump up and grab it and for a second I remember what it felt like to have had you and lost you all at once. That’s all there is to us, to everyone, is things and how long we can keep them for before they’re lost or given away or stolen or seeped into the ground the way I spill out my words as if there were no consequences. Sometimes I don’t care for consequences but truthfully, I’m scared stiff of them. I always thought I had the most irrational fears: ghosts, words, that sinking feeling when I realise I’m alone right after having been in company. But the one fear I can’t seem to dub foolish is the one of the day we will realise we have nothing to say to each other. Nothing that has any meaning, just words empty of intention or feeling. Especially since I think and see and write about you with so much feeling.
And sometimes I feel like a passer of time.
And sometimes I wish I could have a straight stream of thought, less confusing for me and for you and I wish I could always make sense so you could read me easily. But I’d stay awake all night reading to you while you dreamed of things I wish I could see. Then write about them in poems and read them back to you when you woke.
I wish I could wish these things knowing you wished them too, like when I told you it was 22:22 and I wished for you.
But there are no more clouds in the sky now and the only traces I’ll find of you are the wet kisses against my bicycle’s wheels as they tread through puddles on the way home. Such a sweet sound it makes, like giggles from little girls when they realise falling down doesn’t always hurt.
I know it won’t always hurt. I know that everything happens for a reason and I know that nothing is ever truly permanent.
But if I could, I’d leave permanent kisses on your cheek.
Yours in wishing,
Jenique
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