of an arsonist, and her companion
By: Freya Anjani
Tags: Prose, Love, Passion, Poetry, Romance

A frustating, complicated story of two friends in love who knows better than to go through with it more than what they’ve already had. How passion and lust can burn instead of blanketing you with warmth, and the pain of it all. The inability to have, and to hold, for better or for worse.

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It’s a cliche to say you see the whole universe in someone’s eyes when you look at them. I look at yours and I see nothing but my own reflected back at me, and that just means our eyeballs are merely being their pretty reflective surface self, yet somehow the ones in your socket are exactly mine. I think you stole it before we were even born, I knew you were my friend in the before life. You’d steal them and run away and sing “catch me if you can!”, in the next lives I think you’d always have them still. You steal and grab them off like you grabbed my whole existence in our little rendezvous; a five minute walk from my little green house, a sunrise away after dawn.

You have me in your arms like like the whole of me is yours, and I’m starting to think I might be.

I can guess the future like I always somehow correctly guess when someone’s fruity, I always somehow manage to foresee a storyline with someone. But unlike someone’s fruitiness, this other one is not always right, I did think that I was going to marry my ex, how funny is that?

I think I was so certain just because it was only with him I could see myself as a wife, a mother, a maternal figure making breakfast, and gives bedtime stories to a little son that he has always wanted. I am unable to see myself with any motherly instinct, even when it was my own baby brother to take care of. I left him crying on his crib once, staring in horror, my mom found me frozen in front of him after 5 excruciating minutes. And she’d always say, even to my six year old self,

“How are you going to be a mother? what else are you going to be if not a good wife and mother?”

And I’ve always just shrugged. I never had much care for it, the path she wants me to choose. And I’ve already chosen a very different path anyway, lonelier, but mine and mine only. Yet somehow, I saw that road so clearly with him, and when I turned out to be very painfully wrong, I kill every chance I have with someone I could see a clear future with. I no longer believe in omens, weird signs, angel numbers, or why the card I pulled on a certain day always resonates well, too well, or why the wind tastes different and the city sun feels less harsh on my skin. Or when I noticed you look at me differently, with an unbearable kindness and affirmation. Maybe it’s just the universe fucking around, she’s funny like that.

Yet here I am, under you, and your eyes are stabbing mine with an intoxicating intensity. You were born under Scorpio skies, your eyes naturally shoot a look to kill. And born under the same moon in Aries like me, you love me with fire. We walk through a trail of gasoline, burning whatever behind us and never looking back. And after each of your demand of clarity and certainty to my confused heart, I always say;

“One step at a time.”

Yet I trip with every step and though you are ready to catch, you are barely walking properly as well.

We commit arson with each kiss and breathe smoke each gasp of air. Gasps of air in between teeth that doesn’t last for half a second because none of us are capable to be apart from each other for more than one blink of an eye. You look at me like I’m see-through, and I truly am, whenever I’m confined in a room with only you. It was a day of committing a crime that is forbidden by my mother’s God, and yet I have never felt more pure. In here, in this little room, I am nothing but miles and miles of olive skin begging to be caressed. And you don’t have to use your hands to undress me, I am stripped naked every time we sit in comfortable silence and understanding.

“I know what you’re going to say,”

“And that’s why I’m not saying anything.”

I already know what you think and you know better than to tell me what to do.

So we kiss and pull and beg and leave out the door as friends, never anything more.

But your impulsive proclamation of love lingered in the air and follows me wherever I go. And my words of reciprocation haunt me in my sleep and whenever my eyes are open. But I never regretted it, I don’t regret, especially of you.

You and I both know better. You and I both can see a whole map in our eyes; of passion and fireworks and foundations burning into ash and chaos. And never in a million years would I lose you to that, and your face tells me you wouldn’t ever want that too. And I curse myself for trusting my gut, for knowing better. For being able to see what would become of us one fling and a hundred arguments later.

You’d always be back as the one I run to at 2 am asking for answers of what the hell am I doing with my life after a day of computer screens and calling a friend in panic of deadlines, and you would answer with the wisdom of someone five years my senior. You would stroke my ego and affirm me with raspy, tired voice and all, because you are as tired as me and I can already tell from miles away. I’d cry and beg for everything to end and for you to hold me and to just please, repeat the words. And you would say that yes, you love me so much it breaks you seeing me like this. Then I’d say I know. And you’ll offer to come again next week, and I will always say yes. A million little times.

And there will never be more. You and I already know.