:: White Flag ::

My A. I look at him, and I see the scholar, the artist, the friend. I see the sunbeam in his smile, I see his eyes twinkle like earthstars when he talks about lines or spaces or the majesty of his cat. I remember his grave sadness at my gentle rejection before―is there hope? he had asked, his face carrying the weight of the world, his eyes clouded with knowledge. I had looked down, on my hands, at the scar left by a sculpting knife on my finger (Horus, A had christened thus), and then I quietly shook my head. Why, he had persisted, despite the wash of shadows that had come into his eyes. You don't fill my heart the way S. does, I said, unwilling to be blunt, but unable to deceive. He was winded by my honesty, I could tell: he slumped his shoulders against mine, and we fell silent. Loneliness whispered its lonely verse around us, the strength of which was sapping dry our friendship.

That episode of romantic casualty had left its insidious insignia ever since. We stayed friends, and I wanted―perhaps foolishly―to believe that he had recovered from the accidental collision of our hearts. That he was happy with my friendship, my inconsistent place in his life: the urban poet to his eternal artist, the Isis to his Apollo, the occasional cause of his melancholy.

But now. 'I have to leave, don't you see. You are my drug; you make me do desperate, needy things. I need to leave―leave here, leave you.'

The night was quiet. No stars―all the brightness had surrendered itself to the dark. His pain was swallowing the distances; I felt like Judas. Words―appropriate phrases, benign sentiments, silver slips of feelings―played in my head, like the downward rush of current. But I found nothing to say.

'Falling so easy, forgetting so long,' he said, with a ghost of a smile playing on his lips. His eyes fogged over. I held him for a long time, willing him to know that I love him, that I have never stopped loving him―if only as a friend, as his random muse, as what I know isn't what he wants, at all.

I'll miss this walk out to the road, nightsounds in my ear.Your lines still freshly fading from my consciousness. Your scent now a whisper.

I imagined the sweet sadness swirling like impish eddies in his heart as he texted me, and again I ached for the various hearts that do, without rhyme or reason it seems, but with enough potency to dislocate.