promise me now

I want you so much, but I hate your guts

Daughter;;landfill

I was fourteen and you were eighteen and you were my world and my sun and you were everything I wanted but you were also everything more.

I fell in love before I knew what love was it and it was your entire fault, darling. You drew me to you as if you were a fly and I the spider who wanted you. Oh, how I wanted you.

I was fifteen and you were nineteen and you moved away from England and me the life I had created in my head for us. I cried in silence with my head buried under my pillow and I clutched my chest because when I was fifteen and heartbroken that's what I did.

Why did it hurt so much? I wanted to know because love was wonderful and it was what I craved to feel and I wanted to feel loved because I know you loved me, Lysander, as I loved you. Except you wouldn't dare admit that you were in love with me, would you?

Because I was Louis and you were Lysander and we were separate stars in separate solar systems and I wasn't supposed to feel for you the way I did. But things have that odd way of coming together perfectly and then uncoming seamlessly as if they were never together in the first place.

You leave England and me and what we had left no visible scars, Ly, but it left emotional ones and mental ones and ones I would not let anyone see lest they realise the source of my distress.

Because being gay was hard enough when I was barely sixteen, I didn't need my family knowing, did I?

Now I was sixteen and you were twenty and you were back you were engaged to a flighty, dreamy girl who was two years younger than you and two years older than me and – she was French.

Maybe you had a thing for people with French descent, Lysander. Maybe.

The hardest thing was that I got on fine with her. We spoke about you and she didn't know or realise how much I felt for you and how much I wanted to hate her and how much I failed at it.

You watched, didn't you Lysander? You watched and I saw your face and I drew pleasure from the evident pain. You never were a good liar.
You still loved me and I could breathe again.

Do you know how hard it was to watch to look all in love with a girl while I wanted you to look at me like that? Do you know how it felt to be rejected by the boy you loved because you, too, were a boy?

No, you didn't Lysander.

Well let me tell you. It was failed grades and disdainful looks and resentment boiling in my veins and it was the coiling tightness in my stomach that didn't want to be undone. It was you, Lysander. Everything I felt came down to you and I wanted to hate you and I wanted to hate Elodie but I just couldn't. I was a lover, not a fighter.

I was seventeen and you were twenty-one and you were married and unhappy and I was your secret and you were dangerous but you were my drug and, oh, why would I ever fight you off when I wanted you so?

Elodie told me everything, Lysander. While we snuck around and explored each other the way we couldn't when I was merely fourteen, Elodie was at home and she had secrets of her own. They were men that went by the names of your father and my father and my uncles. Secrets are secrets and we all have them.

And I thought I was the naïve one.

The night was dark and so were your eyes and I loved the most, then. You were vulnerable and naked though you were fully clothed against the chill of winter.

"Louis," you said to me. My name sounded like murmured music.

I hummed in response. Your breaths came out visibly in the form of shapeless white clouds. Your cheeks were pinched and pale and your hair dishevelled and you looked lonely.

"Elodie wants a divorce."

I watched the birds on the far end of the field take flight and I watched the stars and I watched the ever moving shadows. I didn't want your face.

"Does she know?"

She was my friend and I didn't want to hurt her though it was inevitable.

"Well, she's fucking my dad and your dad and your uncle Ron and your uncle Percy and no she doesn't know and I doubt she wants to."

I said, "I know."

You didn't say anything but you stood up and you walked away and you didn't look back but I felt calm and numb and I went back to watching the still winter night unfold around me.

I ignored the familiar ache in my chest until I got back home to my mum and dad's house.

I am twenty and you are twenty four and we are strangers meeting for the first time. You are dressed sensibly in a robe you've had forever and I am smiling widely at nothing because you look like you are made for this day. I am young and you are experienced in marriage and I am not but I don't care because you can teach me.

You walked away and so did I but it was temporary because I went back the night after and so did you and we promised each other forever and that's what I want to give you now.

You lean forwards and you kiss me and I kiss you everything melts away and the ache fo losing my mother dulls because new feelings erupt inside of me and it's all your fault, Lysander. Everything I ever feel in my life is your fault but I don't mind because we are one, now. We are forever.

because it's my birthday soon i'm trying something entirely different