Autumn Rain on a Foggy Day in May

“Why do you love me?” You ask one foggy morning when the sun has barely begun to rise.

You must think I am asleep as you sigh and try to bury yourself further into my neck, mumbling things I cannot make out. I tighten my grip around your waist and look down at you in my arms; from here I could count the hairs on your head or map out the points of perfection that make my life worth living that little bit more. I choose not to though, instead I will cradle you until the morning news has finished and we are too late for the world to want us today. Instead we will drink poorly made coffee from our chipped mugs, the ones we bought in a charity shop a year ago just because they had cats in pink bows on them, and attempt to make a gourmet meal with the contents of our fridge; whipping cream, a lone strawberry, one half drunk bottle of apple juice and three eggs won’t get us very far but that is what pretend is for. We will make a fort by the bookshelf and you’ll curl up under pillows, you insist we have, with a flash light and a worn out book and I shall know exactly why as your face lights up at the exact place I knew it would.

You remind me of autumn rain when the season is just beginning, pleased with memories of summer; the rain is still warm, beating down through yellowing leaves, and filling the air with that new sort of smell. Your eyes are the stars I read stories about as a kid, they hold deep secrets beneath their beauty and, whilst they could destroy me, I cannot look away. Those foggy mornings when you lie in my arms, those are the days I live for because all that matters is the duvet between us and the mattress and anything else can wait until the rest of the world has caught up with our heat. Those stupid chipped mugs with coffee ring stains that you cherish and that photo you had framed from our mystery road trip. The car ran out of petrol and we somehow ended up in the middle of a cow field, mud up to our knees, whilst you held the map upside down but refused to admit you had made a mistake. Somehow you always smell of wild flowers and part of me is convinced you escaped from the fairy world because of it. And then there are those moments when I think those exact six words to myself; those dark sleepless nights when not even your scent can lull me to sleep and the ceiling has never seemed so bleak before. I will sit there staring, allowing the thoughts to creep up on me and latch onto my skin as if they were leeches ready to drain me, until I feel you shift beside me, muttering in your sleep about some insane thing and continue to curl yourself around me. It is those moments, those nights, where I am reminded that you love me because you are you and see things in me that I am too blind to but seem to shine to you. Things that make me want to scream until the air is banished from my lungs and my throat begins to bleed from strain but make you want to kiss me warmly.

That is why I love you. Not for your pretty package that first caught my eye but the items it contains and the things it can achieve; the package is just the top layer of your beauty. It is the matching cat mugs and those foggy days, the bad coffee and the galaxies hidden within the depths of your eyes, it is that muddle field in August and the way your smile captures the clear picture of summer nights and seems to generate a similar, and yet entirely different, warmth, but most importantly it is the fact that you love me because you are you and see me the way the world does, not deformed like my reflection, and I love you because I am me and never fail to see everything you miss. Every morning I wake and you have grown even more stunning since the last and every day I am blown away it could actually happen, even from the beginning.

So even though we are both awake I will let you have this moment but once the sun has risen, and we have missed the morning news, it shall be my time to show you the things you missed again. We’ll cradle our horrid coffee and conduct an elaborate plot to steal a coffee machine to save our taste buds from tomorrow (even if we both secretly like the coffee). I will make us scrambled eggs whilst you cut up our entire collection of strawberries into eight tiny pieces so we can have some form of dessert. Together we shall build a fort and have a pillow fight to the death or at least nine o’clock when you will drag me to bed early. We don’t really sleep, not yet; we will stay awake until two and do nothing but talk. My arms cannot go any tighter but still I try in fear you will slip through my fingers in the night and whisper confessions, I have carried around all day, as I do so. Every detail will pass my lips and float right into you until you are filled to the brim with only the first part of my list. At some point you will try to argue but I will silence your insecurities with more words and the brush of lips against your skin. Somehow in the dark I will catch the gleam in your eyes, glazed over with tears, and I shall capture your lips, praying that somehow some god will take pity on me and make it possible for me to transfer to you all my thoughts within my head with a single kiss so you can see just how I see you too. After you will lie down to sleep in the exact same position you awoke this morning but you won’t be able to forget that nothing can stop me from loving you this time. I won’t join you straight away but protect you in my arms a little longer, burying my nose within your hair, and I will marvel at the fact that even though it is a foggy day in May I can still smell the autumn rain.

Reviews

[Nicole]

Nicely written! Love it!

[ANM]

Love is what it is it makes us human! Good write!