melancholia

You lean your back against the cement wall underneath a wide-open window, your head thrown back as though frozen in the picturesque motion of rising, water breaking across your forehead. I can't see, but I can feel the intensity of your half-lidded eyes upon me. One mile-long leg stretches out and the only sound is of your slow, unsteady breathing mingled with the occasional sucking-in of smoke. Smoke, smoke; it rises, engulfing us both in a silvery cocoon. You lazily part your lips and pretty words exhale with the blue-grey fumes in a familiar raspy tone.

"I don't think you understand," you drawl, flicking cigarette ash onto the cracked floor. "I'm not lonely when I'm alone."

This could be perfect, I think, so sensual-like we were lovers already. I could spend my whole life doing this. I could live, forever, with the careful moonlight streaming in above your head, entering into alien marriage with the miasma of stale cigarette smoke, and this quiet adoration.

And all I can whisper back is, "God, you're beautiful."

I have no idea what that is. Wrote it in English class, bored out of my mind, staring out the window. The weather's been dreary today, feeling more like fall than winter. And it's raining.

(Do you remember how much it rained that day, walking home from school? The pink umbrella you'd brought with you didn't help at all, and even though we looked like drenched cats we were laughing and singing English Summer Rain and even took the long way home. Do you remember how you made us hot chocolate and even let me put on a Metallica music DVD, since your mom and brother weren't home yet? I remember. Too well.)

I miss England.