Love Story

Love stories are meant to be magical, breathtaking, impossible. They're meant to make you dream, to make your heart swell with hope, to make you wish you'd be the one swept off your feet, dainty or not. Love stories are meant to be our futures, seeds of what could be, implanted in us since childhood. Who of us have grown without stories, without fables, without fairytales, without legends, without myths? I believe near none. No matter the social class, we are stuffed with tales full of princesses awaiting to be saved, and of the right man who, in the end, does just that. But tell me, where on Earth do you find so many weak-minded princesses without the determination to save themselves? And all those men - usually princes - who are ready to risk their lives for something so inaccessible and romantic as love? Nowadays, a man who seranades a woman, who writes poems - who dreams! - is considered effeminate, made fun of. I do not believe in Love. Or at least, I didn't until a short while ago. Here, encased in this binding, is my love story: a tale with no romance, no sweetness, no hope - none in the traditional sense, that is. I am no princess, and he is no man to dream of. Yet, this is a love story. How is that possible? Just turn the page and read. Chapter One I knew something good was going to happen. I woke up before my alarm, a rare event, and found myself full of bursting energy, my body ticking. Sunlight escaped from the borders of the curtain, and I managed to get up easily. Hastily, I made my bed, and went to the bathroom. I took a cold shower, unusual, nonetheless perfect for such a day. In less than hour I had breakfasted a mug of chocolate milk, and finished preparing myself. I still remember how I looked. My hair was tied up in a ponytail, parted on the side, and I'd added some mascara to enhance my already long eyelashes, just for fun. I wore my favourite cherry lipgloss, and had put on some blush on my pale cheeks. I wore a light green dress, feather light, that reached my knees; short sleeves fluttering, a delicate v-neck, a matching ribbon wrapped itself around my waist, making me look thinner than I actually am. On top of it, I wore a black leather jacket, and completed the image with matching black converse shoes.

Lover Without Love

I lie in bed, alone, the covers my barrier against the world. I lie on my side, hugging myself, because there are no other arms to do so. I breathe shallow, bite back sobs, shake. Everything is so cold, when love has been diluted into nothing, dedicated to another but me. I feel the presence of the emptyness, it's vastness crushing me; I feel small, naked, exposed, vulnerable. I close my eyes, pray for sleep - to forget. All of it. A thin, childish voice comes from the street, singing. Joyful. I shudder, hear the lyrics taunting me; an ode to a caring lover. The voice fades away as it's owner moves further from my home, and once again, I am absolutely alone. I fall into a thoughtless reverie, looking through everything, into nothingness. I am no longer aware of anything, and time passes, the shadows of the sun through the curtains shifting on my wall. A crash. I jerk back into my body, quiver. Footsteps. Is somebody in the house?

Leyla

Her body drifted slowly through the depths of the green sea, steadily sinking lower and lower. Bubbles escaped her lips, desperate to reach the surface, as once their host had been. Her strawberry blonde hair splayed out, surrounded her face, made her look ethereal. An angel floating through the heavens, white dress gently swaying. She was to be no more, yet he kept swimming towards her. His desperate strokes would have long since tired him out, if it weren't for the rush of adrenaline that percoursed him. His chest ached, and the pressure had long since popped his ears. But he was not to be denied. Finally, mercifully, he managed to reach out and stop her in mid-journey, grabbing her slight wrist. He pulled her up, putting an arm around her wasp-like waist, and started swimming up, black already surrounding the edges of his eyesight. Air had never tasted so sweet, when he gasped it in. Without stopping too long, he swam quickly to the shore, making sure to avoid the pier. There, he dragged Leyla's dead body, and laid it on the moist sand. He touched her blue lips, checked for a pulse on both her neck and wrist...nothing. She was gone. His tears where the first of a lifetime that had seen no childhood. The crying was clumsy: he did not know what to do, what was happening to him, why his eyes were leaking in such an unmanly way. But overall, he did not know what would happen now: how could he live without his beautiful Leyla? He hugged her form, holding her to his chest, adding more salt water to her hair. That's when the explosion happened. The earth seemed to shudder to it's very core with the force of it, and he saw that the pier was now on fire, people - or what looked like people- dotting the water beneath it. Screams reached him, and he knew that he had to leave, lest he be found. It was with strong arms that he carried his beloved away, running for the canopy and safety of the forest.

Invisible

A murmur unheard, a sigh ignored, painfully unnoticed. Breathe.

I float, I flounder.

I float, I flounder. The world is bright, the colors bleeding, the sky spinning, mixing with the ground. I am swimming in the air, I am in the centre of the earth, lulled and cradled by it's warmth. I am alive and dead; I am human and I am a spirit nymph. Insubstiality washes over me in an insurmountable wave, batters me so I can no longer distinguish between reality and my mind. I am both, I am none, I am everything, I have never been. Who are you? Friend or foe, friend or foe, I am the fiend. Nice to meet you, curtsy, twirl, pop. Light headedness to create hilarity, to make shapes surreal, to bring forth the faeries, the creatures that have long since gone into hiding, ever since religion started. As you try to walk they trip and nudge you, make you wobble, make you step over invisible crevices like canyons. People stare, confused. You are outside, see yourself, cry and laugh at once, but see your body make the noise, even if it doesn't understand the confusion. The faeries swarm, you bat them away. Bright bright bright colours. Who?

Ide

I followed the rhythm of our bodies, tried to lose myself in the passion. But as soon as I reached the peak, I knew it wasn't enough, knew that I would soon be falling back to reality, back to the bottom of life. He came to soon after. Climbing off of him, cramped in the humid car, I half sat next to him, slipping on my underwear, dragging on my tight jeans over my sweaty legs. I buttoned by shirt, noticed a button missing. I sighed, ran my hands through my short hair, trying to tame it back to something not so mussed. He watched me the whole while, trying to breathe deep and slowly, calming the heart I had felt racing against my own a few minutes earlier. I leaned over to give him one more kiss, and then reached over to open the door. A hand grabbed my other wrist. “Wait.” His voice was deep, nice, actually. “Ide. Please.” “No, Mark. I’m going.” I shook his hand off, reached over to open the door once more. “Will I ever see you again, Ide?” “No. You will not. And if you do, I will not recognize you, because my name is not Ide.” “It isn’t?” I had startled him. Why? What could it matter to him? We were strangers. “No. Don’t ask me my real one, I won’t give it.” I got out of the car, saw his still half naked form. “I had a good time, Mark. Thanks.” He laughed a dry, sarcastic laugh. “Do you do this often?” He asked, just as I was shutting the door. “Does it matter?” “It was my first time, doing it with a lady I just met.” “Well, I’m no lady. So goodbye, Mark. Don’t lose yourself in this shit situation, if you can help it.” The door shut with a click and I walked away, the cool night breeze refreshing. It was around three in the morning, but I decided to walk home anyway, the city’s blocks as forlorn and dark as my soul. It was around four a.m. when I reached the door to my apartment, opened it, walked up the old and creaky stairs, up onto the third floor, apartment number seven. There, once I shut the door behind me, I let out another sigh, exhausted. Locking the door, dropping the keys into a ceramic bowl, the clang of the action followed me all the way to the small bathroom, with the old bathtub. I turned on the hot water, and took off my clothes, slowly. Then I sat on its edge, in front of the mirror, waiting for it to fill up.

I am a ghost as wind shivers through me.

I am a ghost as wind shivers through me. The grass sighs, tall stalks swaying hypnotically, sensual brushes against my soul. A shrinking of my encasement, what I might call skin tight. I breathe out, my last. I shut out the eternal indigo sky, the stars' pattern etched in my heart; fall back in slow motion, disappearing into the Earth, song of the past.