I know how trite this is - seriously. I know how many people have vidded or written about or covered this song, but it was on the radio while I was cooking and inspired the crap outta me. There really is no better way to achieve enlightenment, according to my sister (whose favourite song is The Smiths' 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out', which extols the virtues of you and your beloved getting hit by a double-decker bus) than to listen to the likes of Leonard Cohen.
Enjoy.
And Every Breath We Drew Was Hallelujah
He used to be harder than this -
Darker.
Body says yes, mouth says no.
The fluttering wings of a heartbeat came upon him in the aftermath, when she stirred drowsily and he realised he was clinging to her like a drunken, drowning swimmer.
Feelings back in their boxes, where they belong.
Want -
What a cripple it makes of him.
.
For the days when she had her secrets in her closet, ashes in her mouth.
For the days of sanctity.
For the life she chose, this one -
Emotional poverty.
For the black heart of a society wife, and not one which beats and bleeds when he is gone.
.
Nothing can be right like this, or easy (as if anything ever was easy).
He still can't say 'those three significant words' to anyone other than her as anything other than just that. People wonder what he's talking about, because he can't seem to shape them when it's not her whisper he hears, her hand on his arm, caught between time and space with the car door open and her dark eyes screaming.
Walking on by when he smells her perfume is like opening a vein.
.
She takes up aversion therapy.
One snap: impatience (why can't we be together? Why?)
Two snaps: anger (don't I deserve to be happy? Don't we?)
Five snaps: disobedience (when she sits all night outside his penthouse with her head against the wall and doesn't dare go inside).
It gets so there is a permanent bruise around her wrist, and people frown at her long lace sleeves and the quiet turn of the head.
.
"Have you made something of yourself yet?" He asks spitefully, when they are forced into company and he is raw and sore from thinking of her. "Or is business at Columbia just too taxing for you to fathom?"
"Why don't you have another drink," she suggests coolly, when all he really wants to do is slam her into a wall.
.
Avoidance is sometimes not an option. Sometimes, she has no choice but to live the day with her eyes open -
As if anyone in New York ever has before.
He was her teacher, once, her mentor in all things erotic; they could never be on par - after all, she can list her rendezvouses on the fingers of one hand whereas he needs the entirety of a black book and the telephone directory - so they're not equals. Still, she can't help but remember the first time she was kissed there, touched here, and the delight is black tinged and fuses with the ache of regret.
.
If an atom was split apart on the day they died, the last corresponding pieces would be labelled Chuck and Blair.
Fin.