The day comes unhinged, at that far edge of the sky too bright to see.
You lie awake in bed with eyes still closed, because you are afraid to open them. He is near you, almost touching, his arms and legs and neck all twisted. His hair flattened to one side. His breathing is thin, stretched out.
Unawake, he stirs, and this hollow space between you lengthens. You want to break through. To say something to him, like his name, like some sort of promise. Your voice is dull under your tongue, still weak from the hours before. The hot damp of night when he said, hush—a fistful of your hair in his hand. When beneath him you were split open—fearing that your bones would unclasp and the marrow would seep away.
Now the light pushes broken through the slatted blinds, cutting up the bodies, yours and his. These bodies that earlier were joined—once so knotted together that his hands were your hands and your heart was his.
As he opens his eyes and pulls to you, everything inside stops working. Your heart is in your mouth. His lips at your throat, and the blood is drawn to the surface of your skin. You cannot blame him for this. You hold him. His name is out of reach, and when the whorl of his ear is close to your mouth, you murmur the only other thing he would ever want to believe—
mine.
Well that was just terrifying …terrifyingly awesome. Okay, that was just blatently poor use of words. I apologize.
It was, however, a wonderful piece and it definitely was a great way to break up my day. Every word in this piece seems to know exactly where it belongs and it sits there, carrying the weight of its meaning with pride.
But the most powerful part of this is easily the ending. It does a great job of expressing the sentiment of wanting someone to want you but from the someone’s point of view. Not only that, but I really commend you for taking the creative leap and working from second person. Not many people dare use it because it really forces the writer to write so believably that the reader, you, is convinced that they feel the same way.
I especially want to commend you for the use of the word “unawake” at the beginning of the third paragraph. I’ve never once seen it used but I now rather like it. And I keep saying it over and over again and it sounds so clumsy but it fits into this piece so well that I hardly recognized it as something unusual.
This is perfectly superb, blackbird.
Best of luck and happy writings.
~lilymoore