Written while listening to Stars - Your Ex-lover is dead . Dedicated to that girl I hardly ever see anymore...
Your Ex-Lover is dead
I thought I saw you at the market today, wearing your strange, innocent smile, your eyes a vivid green, bringing a soft breeze on my face and straight through my heart. Moments smell of pine-trees when you are around, but then again, you almost never are.
I thought I saw you standing there all alone, buying twinkling Christmas lights and little striped candy canes, and for a second I considered approaching you, but then the crowd took you away. From that day on, I don't trust my mind too much. My imagination, it seems, is running away with me. And it seems that you, once flesh and bones and burning skin, sighs and moans and pants and flushed cheeks and violent hands and passionate lips pressed on my body, are nothing more anymore than a figment of my ill-bred imagination.
Thing which is quite silly, actually. Not even my imagination is on my side these days. Couldn't blame her. Wasn't I the one that used to say that love is for fools?
You would frown and turn your back at me, pretending to want to sleep. I knew you would spend the night awake, but I also knew I would not get another word out of you, apart from a murmured good-night when I would kiss your shoulder. I would not regret it though, hurting you that way. Your broken face would bring a smirk on my lips and I would remember the old days, when infuriating you was the only thing that could get my blood rushing; I would remember who I used to be.
What I gave up for your company in a four-poster bed.
What I gave up for a few pine trees and the fluttering of my heart.
You would walk around the house on those nights, pouring whiskey in those glasses we had for champagne, even if we never used to drink or even have a bottle of it at home. It never occurred to anyone to buy a different set of glasses. Perhaps it reminded us of how mismatched we were ourselves, or perhaps we never cared about anything but each other.
Each other that we were quite fond of letting down. I would lie sleepless in our bed, eyes fixated on our colorless ceiling, thinking of Hogwarts, of the war and of raging flames, thinking about how we were nothing and everything tangled together, our existence bearing no meaning at all, brought together by sheer reaction to normality and the existing standards of love, not even once thinking of stepping into the living room and cuddling you in my arms, allowing you to cry for everything you had dreamt and you were never meant to have with me.
Because how could I, really?
Some dreams should be torn down early on, while some things should never happen. I don't know into which category this situation of ours falls, but I had begun to feel it in my gut, things should, and would, soon be over.
It dawned on me when you began not bothering returning to our bed after those outbursts, and one morning I found your whiskey spilt on our cheep carpet and our ashtray full of cigarettes I thought you had forgotten how to roll.
I felt my heart sink in my chest, but kept on walking straight ahead and out of the door.
It was the first day of winter.
Soon enough you were talking to me only when necessary, not babbling ceaselessly over lunch or by the fireplace when the only thing I wanted was to read the news and have a drink by myself after a long day. In contrast with what I believed, it wasn't a pleasant change of pace. Your life became even more unknown to me, and soon you were nothing more than a stranger I would tear my heart out of my chest for.
Sex had become even more violent since that night you submitted to smoking once more, you straddling me every night with a mere whispered 'I'm cold' and allowing me to devour you until you were screaming my name, voice desperate and needy, and it was in those moments, I believe, that my heart escaped my chest forever.
Or was it with the first snow?
I knew it would be our last Christmas together. The messages from Ginny that I used to find regularly while you were taking showers, joined with my not-so-innocent calls to Astoria were evidence enough. But that day Muggle London was so indisputably pretty, that warmed even the empty space where my heart used to beat. That day London town was so majestically beautiful, that I felt like kneeling in front of you and begging you to never leave me. In my naivety, I had thought it would be enough.
I bought you some flowers, irises if I recall correctly, and headed home. Suddenly I wanted to kiss you so badly that my eyes were watering at the thought alone. I would give Astoria up; I would break your phone. I would tie your eyes and change your dreams of children that I could never give you. I would build a new world for us, where we would be accepted, where we could be heard. I would make you fall for me again, and get myself a new heart made only for you. I would believe in love.
I would have believed in love, if you had been there that day, waiting for me. I would have given up my pride and went public with the Boy who Lived as my partner. I would have torn down the whole Malfoy heritance, if my eyes had rested on you that afternoon.
But it was never meant to be.
On that year's first day of snow, I picked up smoking.
Three months later I sold the house and never passed by that street again. I bet it doesn't even exist anymore. I bet the hole in my heart swallowed it upon my departure.
And on the other hand, I still think you are there, lying on that green sofa you used to hate, reading the daily prophet that you disliked as well, waiting for me to return from work because you always got home earlier, being the fucking Hero of the world. And I would unlock the door and you would smile that brilliant smile, blinding me with a happiness that wasn't my own.
Every day I persuade myself you are still there, but perhaps I'll take a shortcut for the shops and return a bit later.
Astoria never asks why I only bring her irises.
She never asks why I never want to walk through muggle London on snowy days, and only frowns when I smudge Amelia street on the map.
And perhaps one day, I will knock on your door and see how you're doing, but I'll have to let go of the thought that you're still waiting for me somewhere first.
So perhaps, for the time being, I'll have another cigarette and come home to you a bit later.
My Christmas depression is present at last. Great! Review for me if you liked - or not :)