Slow down that moment. Look again.

The rain makes you bow your head and you’re not looking at him but at the shallow incline of the pavement to the road, neon lights opposite reflected in growing puddles, fracturing in to indiscernible splashes of colour as cars speed past. You don’t really register the nervous glance he gives you just before he reaches for your hand and tangles his fingers in yours in one shy, tentative movement.

Slow it down, think back, look again.

The feel of his palm colliding with yours, the look in his eyes as you turn to him and the relief which washes over his features when he realises that you’re smiling. The sound of his laugh, short and unhindered. The gap in traffic which causes him to break in to a run across the road with you still grasping his hand like a lifeline, his refusal to let go even as you reach the pavement on the other side and he turns to look at you again.

Slow it down, think back, feel it in your bones. Look again.

The racing of your heart making your blood thump in your ears, fast pace echoed in the skipping of your breath. See the soul in his eyes, desperate, wanting, waiting. Watch as he leans closer to you, feel the world around you get duller until all that’s left is the two of you. His lips on yours,

His lips on yours,

His lips on yours.

The tears started to track their way reluctantly down the curvature of your face, hanging for a moment in trepidation before giving in to that final, irresistible pull towards the floor. As they hit the marble glowing flowers began to bloom, gaining momentum as they reached up toward the ceiling with an almost tentative curiousity. The stone beneath them cracked, pulled apart, and began to float lazily in to the air as if drawn to the brightening canopy forming above. The deep sigh that left your lungs after such a tragically short breath turned to feathers, stark white in the half light.

You made something beautiful, you see, from your sadness; something which was astonishingly heartbreaking and breathtaking in equal measure. That was a rare thing to do in itself, really. Sadness took many forms, but in your experience beauty was not often one of them.

The thing you need to understand is that love should be all encompassing. It should be as delicate as it is loud, as elegant as it is clumsy. It should be warm, fiery, but also so cold that ice catches on the edges of your soul. Sometimes it will feel as though your heart is being torn out of your chest for the sheer hell of it and that, my darling, is when you know that you’re in love.

You are my warmth in the winter. As I stood there with the sky laying snowflakes to rest on my face, I thought of getting home to you, of the soft taste of camomile on your lips as you kissed me. I was no longer falling in love, you see. I was quite comfortably settled there, and had been for some time. And that was the difference, the part I’d never realised. That spark of love, the excitement which seems to drift just out of grasp, it simply evolves, moves forward. It is not lost but rather more content, more settled. It had become a part of me without me ever realising.

The air smelled of early morning sweetness, crisp and somehow optimistic. I always felt like that when I woke before 5AM, when the sun was still out of sight in the lightening sky and I could see my breath hanging in the air in front of me for an instant. The sight hitched a memory to the back of my mind, childhood laughter echoing and the innocent mocking of adults with candy cigarettes.

You know when the city is only just waking up and it actually feels quiet? Trains sliding up to the platforms in a whisper like they’re afraid of waking those still slumbering behind misted windows, the tapping of heels from that one early morning commuter echoing from wall to wall as she hurries past, cars murmuring along open roads without the mid morning roar of traffic to break its stride. It’s so odd to live in a city so large and experience that, so hard to forget that there’s a regular intake of breath as mechanical lungs unfold and start to work again. Like a daily reminder that there is always calm before the storm, the heavy silence of electricity filling the air, thunder rumbling in the distance.

Do you really want to stick around to watch the world burn?