// elements //

- four drabbles. the anatomy of a relationship.

*

This is how it starts.

Eyes that see more than you've ever been willing to reveal, and something inside you recognise without even knowing it.

"We can't," you say, the words so clear in your head before they roll off your tongue and vanish into nothing. Can't is a word for people who aren't him, who aren't you. A word unaware of the taste of him under your tongue, his breath on your skin, your nails against his back. Can't is none of these things, and it's not for you.

Can't becomes can't stop, and you'd never want to anyway.


*


This is how it goes.

Days slide into nights that wrap around you, holding you tight. Blue flame licking at your skin, drops of sweat kissed from between your shoulders, words whispered soft and low into the half-light of dawn.

You wake in fifty different cities, fifteen different countries, five different timezones. People talk in rhymes, riddles, words you never knew existed until you hear them as often as your own name.

You're everywhere and nowhere, slapbang in the middle of something that could turn on you anytime. But he's there, he's real, and you hold on with both hands.



*


This is how it is.

"Three years," he breathes into the curve of your neck. "Did you ever think-"

"No." You lick the word into his mouth, because you never did, never thought it'd be like this for so long. Every day is like the first time all over again, something tiny and precious you hold cupped in your heart.

Three years, eight months and forty-three days. If you'd been counting, you'd know that without looking or writing it down. But you don't, because you haven't.

Well, at least not out loud. And not anywhere he could find it.



*



And now. Now you wonder when it was you finally stopped counting, when it was he stopped listening. When exactly you both stopped talking.

He's still there, and you're still here and there's timezones and riddles, and can't means a whole lot more now than it ever did before. Can't is the way he won't look at you, has become all the things you won't say. Can't is the soft bruise-purple underbelly of too many things you both took for granted. Can't is the soft exhale of a breath held in for far too long.

Can't becomes how it ends.

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