Chapter 1: Before
A/N: Not sure yet if I want to continue this or just make a collection of one-shots…Also note that the grammar for this won't make sense. I wanted it to sound the way one's own thoughts would to themselves, if that makes sense.
Meeting you was a miraculous mistake.
Miraculous; almost impossible; unforeseeable. You had wide, curious eyes. Blue, like the sky. All I could do was smile.
In my hands the barest flutter pulsed. Small white doves with equally small twigs held in their beaks. So ready and poised to release, like they'd been waiting for centuries, and never knew until now.
When our hands brushed, I crossed my toes. And hoped-That you wouldn't feel the stirring beat of tiny wings against your palm. Shhh, be calm, quiet, still.
The bright faces of the flowers. Even now, I can feel them jeering at my awkward muteness. Sometimes I still glare at their small petals. Part of me refuses to believe their innocence. You followed my gaze and giggled-but even that is a pale description. For what can match the beauty of thousands of stars, hundreds of worlds? Tantalizingly sweet, like fresh cream at the creamery down the street.
Do you-like flowers? you asked. How wrong you were. But I couldn't say no. Could only shrug and say, "I guess". You make me like the flowers.
Even then, your faint warmth lingered. A nest for waking doves. My hands still remember that feeling. Soft; Open; Achingly homely.
So how, then, could a miracle feel like such-such a mistake?
In part, you can't be blamed-It's not directly because of you. And yet-Why is it that I can barely, hardly, breathe? Whose suffocating hands are wrapped around my throat? Where is the origin of rising heat? These white feathers, now taking on your color. Flutter. Beat. Wing.
A frenzy of movement that I can't-Can't contain. Like the sound of a xylophone. Rising and falling. The forceful tug. But where is it? No matter how I search, I can't find it. The constricting red thread that must lay here: somewhere around my heart.
When you threw back your head to the sun, I was so, so entranced. Were you some sort of otherworldly magician? I can't look away, and this aching, aching, hurt, nestled deep below my skin just grows. In my palms, beneath my ribcage.
I want you either across an ocean, or close. Very very close. To me. Because where you are now-that distance is neither, and it is excruciating. I want to set these frenzied birds free, but I need to stifle them. I want you to see-me, but I also want to hide. I want a lot of things. But right now, I just want you to hold my hand, and ease the pressure of these thousands of birds-like rows of words on an open page. And yet, I don't even know your name.
I wish I did.
