: A Good Time To Say Something

18:14 26th Feb 2012

Notes: 48

Reblogged from aclockworkdarby-deactivated2012

Tags: prose short fiction flash fiction fiction

A Good Time To Say Something

Brilliant.

“I love you,” she whispered, after we became still, her naked body atop mine. She traces my lips with her eyes. She rests her weight upon my chest. She runs delicate fingers through my hair with her right hand. She does this every time we have sex. Her light brown hair drapes down around our faces, a thin curtain that creates the illusion that it’s just her and I, living in a world that’s entirely us, breathing in each other’s breathing space. We do this every time we have sex.

We never say, “I love you.” That was what we had agreed upon. She just said it though. How long it’s been since someone has said that to me. I had forgotten what it sounds like; the way it begins with the proud egotism of “I,” followed by its tender, immediate contradiction, “love,” and then hammered like a nail into a very specific someone’s heart, making a very audible bang that comes out sounding like “you.”

It hurt hearing it. I never wanted this. I didn’t think she did either. She’s my best friend. But now that is certain to change, for better or worse. We had both been so perfectly broken, so painfully alone. Our hearts had been given to others who had been careless with them, acting as though they were made of titanium or steel, tossing them around simply for the pleasure of pleasure. Our hearts were not titanium or steel. They were a thousand glass intentions housed within the glass hands of a thing called love. And how we were enraptured by it, absolutely awestruck, all the while entirely unaware of its nature, unable to fathom all the things that make a heart beat. It’s no wonder that when our hearts were broken, we had not the first notion of how to rearrange the pieces in a manner that would kick-start its cadence once again. So instead we had gathered the pieces, and locked them in a dark corner of ourselves where they were not forgotten, but never to be complete again.

How does one love with a broken heart? I might give her love, if I knew how. I might give her my heart, if I had one left to give. Is that what love is? Is this love?

This, this would be a good time to say something.