I've been
watching your world from afar
I've been
trying to be where you are
and I've been
secretly falling apart
I've seen
*
Through summer haze she looks like an angel. If I could freeze a moment, seal it under my skin, it would be in one of those rare seconds the swing of her ruby hair catches the light and everything sparkles gold. The time where the sweet fragrance of evening primrose is settling in the air and the sky is a dome of violet blue and the world feels light, as if we could drift away forever.
When the rain falls I linger longer, play her footsteps back in my head like a fizzing home-movie on continuous loop. She's swapped halos; damp strands of the darkest red wine curl across her jaw line, ending tantalisingly at the corner of her mouth. Bare feet walking on diamante grass, soft dark mud between the toes.
I watch her in secret, waiting for heartbeats of beauty to get me through the day.
*
To me
you're strange and you're beautiful
you'd be
so perfect with me but you just
can't see
you turn every head but you don't
see me
*
He's been coming round a lot these days. Whenever he can get time. I see him fly past my window, slick on his broomstick like a cupid's arrow. A meaty grab at your slender waist, a ruddy cheek buried in that scarlet hair; these things are enough to send me screaming from the room. Except, you don't seem to hear anymore. He never heard in the first place.
My mother is worried, she thinks I've introverted. She asks me, Ron, why don't you go flying anymore? Why don't you speak at the dinner table? What do you do behind all those locked doors?
It reminds me of her. I can't speak in front of her. I only think about her. Everything leads back to Ginny.
*
I'll put a spell on you
You'll fall asleep
And I'll put a spell on you
And when I wake you
I'll be the first thing you see
and you'll realise that you love me
*
I know what I'm doing. Don't tell me I'm deluded, don't shake you're head in sorrow at this poor, sick boy. Because I know it already. I've stepped away from myself and seen it with my own eyes. This is who I am. This is my life now.
She wakes me with her hands. I feel them, light as snow on my temples, sliding coolly downwards to cup my cheekbones and sweep thumbs made of dawn light across my skin. I open my eyes and watch her drift into mist, her lips just millimetres from my own, and wish I'd waited a little longer. The day, from breakfast until supper, is spent trailing from a distance; the dusty tail end of a flaming comet. I'm lost in space, snatching at moments, feverish in my desire to talk to her, to touch her hand and kiss her eyelids.
Silence at night time is the worst, when my fantasies come out to play. That's what they are. Fantasies. Because I know she will never feel the same way, she would never love her brother in the way I love my sister. It isn't about what's underneath those bright little robes she wears, or even those budding apple-pink lips. Yes, I would love to fit my fingers between her hollow ribs, to run a finger down her fragile spine and touch my mouth to every inch of skin. But I would be searching, talking, digging all the while. It's about her self. Ginny.
*
Sometimes
the last thing you want comes in first
Sometimes
the first thing you want never comes
And I know
that waiting is all you can do
Sometimes
*
I'll tell you what I love. I love her laugh, how it can change from a bright dew droplet to a vicious, roaring waterfall. I love the way she saves her rage for what matters, not like me, not like my pathetic outbursts; my snipes against a world I can never be free in. I love it when she's vulnerable and her face is slick and grey with tears and her skin looks like wet paper; soft and ready to break. It lets me shine. I can charge in, ready to protect, ready to share any number of moments with her. Let them come and do their worst, nothing can touch her when she knows her brother's there.
I told her this, long ago. The room was dark and full of ghosts. Roosters, torn at the throat; the pages of a faded book, turning in the breeze. A boy with a beautiful smile. She looked to me with a face of moulded moonlight and liquid eyes and whispered she had loved him. Our fingers laced, the burnt-amber hairs on our arms rose in friction. You know I'll always protect you, Ginny. I know what it is, to love without being loved in return.
And she had looked at me. For those few seconds, she looked deeply into me and saw it with the clarity of a body at the bottom of a pond. She saw, and she stayed, and I couldn't breathe as she leaned towards me, lips neon black in the darkness. For the briefest of instants, they touched against mine, and I tasted what it was like to be free. But the skin that had been stripped re-grew as quickly as it had been slashed aside and the moment passed. Perhaps she'll remember some day. Perhaps, next time, she'll stay forever.
*
I'll put a spell on you
You'll fall asleep
Cos I put a spell on you
And when I wake you
I'll be the first thing you see
and you'll realise that you love me
