Not Enough Time

His hand grasps hers tightly in one hand and a fluffy tuft of grass in the other. His back is to the grass and she is right beside him. They stare into each other’s eyes. Her eyes are a supernatural green, alluring, dangerous, and otherworldly.  Her hair is twirled and twisted in and around blades of grass. Her swirling curls that are brilliantly pale orange contrast brightly with the natural green hues. She wishes he would kiss her already. He doesn’t get the hint and sits up brushing off bits of green and brown attached to his back. His hand leaves hers and he feels each tear he makes as each strand of grass is pulled away from the earth. He throws it all over her and watches as the green confetti twirls jaggedly to the ground. Her pale orange dress becomes dotted with grass. She glares at him, her piercing gaze inviting him to move closer. He pulls her on top of him and her laugh echoes around the small empty park filling it with the mirth of Christmas day.

He knows she loves him but he’s still not sure what to do. He spent his whole life wondering whether his life would just go by without him realising, like a cloud. But now something worthwhile was happening that made him want it to stop so he could continue on carefree. She is his happiness and he isn’t sure how to deal with that.

He is dying. He can feel the energy of his life slowly ebbing away day by day. One or two years from now and no one knows…. not yet anyway.

He remembers how he met her for the first time in this park. She appeared out of nowhere, like a falling star. He had no one until her. No girl was ever so vibrant, so feisty, so … her.

She had looked so confused at first. He had walked slowly and cautiously towards her and then asked her if she was all right. She had hesitated before answering.

“Alexis Tellyweather.”

“I didn’t ask… never mind. Are you all right?’

“Perfectly so for an all right person.”

“You have a weird name.”

He hadn’t meant to say it but he got his punishment none the less. She punched him hard, for a girl. He had hints of a black eye for a few days after that. Her hand was still closed as she looked down on him. He slowly moved to a sitting position as she squatted down next to him. Her fingertips lightly traced his cheek down his face. He put his clumsy hand up to retrace her line and found red staining his fingers.

“What a marvellous red!”

Her words were soothing and drove away any harsh emotions he had felt towards her. She’s still as peculiar as she was then.

Her eyes were staring directly above his and he noticed there were flecks of starlight within the lively green. They reminded him of stories long forgotten. Suddenly he saw a slight flicker out of the corner of his eye and her lips were on his. He had been so surprised he had jumped without leaving the ground and caught his foot on a root. She laughed so much she couldn’t hold herself up anymore and ended up with her face first on his chest and her body shaking from a happiness he had never known before. Soon they were both rolling on the ground hysterical. Passers-by ignored them and the world had moved on around them. They were stuck in their own little world where everything else in existence didn’t mean anything and all that mattered to him was her. And yet somehow, she beat him to those three annoyingly lovely words.

Today he had planned to tell her but she was so happy. He couldn’t spring such news onto her now. She looked down at him with those wonderful eyes and he got lost in how beautiful she was on top of him. She smiled gently and moved to his side in a sighing manner.

“What’s wrong Ian?”

He looked down, noticed his jeans developing a loose thread and started picking at it with his fingers. Knowing he can’t avoid it forever he looks up into her face and notices a sad smile.

“I’m dying, Alexis.”

“I know. Everyone is. How long?”

He’s slightly taken aback by her answer and indicates one to two with his fingers. She nods her head in response.

“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”

This was the moment she’d been waiting for. The moment he’d been waiting for. He pecks her cheek and moves his lips slowly towards her ear and then whispers.

“I love you.”

He slips a note into her pocket.

Dear Alexis,

I need you like the sun needs the light,

I love you like a flower loves the sun and the bees, and the rain,

I think of you so much that it hurts me that I’ve hardly had any time left with you,

If only you had appeared like a falling star when I was old enough to comprehend love. It has been an adventure and I don’t know where you came from or your real name (neither do you) but I just want you to know.

I love you and I know the words are too general to say. Something anyone could say so I will write to you what those words mean to me when I say them to you. I know this isn’t the best worded love letter but it’s my first and most likely to be my last.

I love your hair, your quirky taste in colours, your very bad scrambled eggs. I love that you take up way too much space in bed and that you light candles to blow them out again and waste all our matches. Everything you do and say, I adore and treasure in my chest. So I hope that sums up what I mean when I say those words even though those few things are barely the beginning of why I love you.

Je’tadore

Je’taime

Other languages look so much fancier.

I need your laughter

I crave your voice,

I adore your addictive nature.

I don’t think I will ever be happier.

So once upon a time a girl punched a boy.

He thought her name was weird

And they fell in love.

A heart is what connects them together

And will forever more.

My heart is my life source

And it is yours to take from me.

I love you so much.

Ian.

The wind tells stories

Her wings fluttered gently in the wind as she stared at the bee. It was wondering through the air from flower to flower and she delighted in its ability to keep life flowing by just touching each and every flower with pollen. It was beautiful and strange. 

She had never experienced what people call love. She didn’t know many people though. Her skin was too iridescent and her wings too obvious for her to hang out with others not like her. Her eyes glittered with a strange violet tinge and she turned around. There wasn’t much to do but she loved it.

Her ideas were much more interesting to entertain. She saw something in the corner of her eye and heard rather than saw the movement. It was quick and she recognised her friend. It was the stone fox herself. She saw her mane of rainbow hair flowing and saw she wasn’t alone. It looked like she was dragging someone along the poor soul! She sang a note to catch her attention. Stone fox stopped and her new friend crashed into her. He wasn’t very elegant. But then again, standing beside her who could be? Her eyes stared into her violet ones and they journeyed through a few memories together and she smiled. 

“Hi Kit! Who’s your friend?”

Kit rolled her eyes. She didn’t see the need for speech but humoured her friend.

“He doesn’t know his name but I am calling him Jal. What do I call you at this moment? Have you changed your identity again?”

“I never change.” And she winked. “I go with what the wind whispers in my ear. Today is a very Viola day. To match my eyes I suspect.”

Kit nods her head and listens to hear if she can catch the winds whispering - alas that was not her area.

Her hair bespoke memories and adventure and the wind liked to fly by her while she ever tried to catch its stories. She suspected she moved too much to hear a full story. Too impatient for the story to tell. The wind often whispered slow meandering stories full of things she could not understand. Still moments that tended to mean something to only those who were part of it. She could not understand the small gesture of picking up a lady’s handkerchief as a whole start of something bigger. It made no sense; the subtlety of it. There was no time for subtlety in this short life. You want something, you need to catch hold of it and run head fast into the adventure of it all. 

She had of course learned nothing from this stranger, JAL, yet but she was still enjoying just running with him. His thoughts were scattered and everywhere but she calmed him with her own.

Viola looked between the glances they shared with each other and felt the wind catching at this moment to tell later. She enjoyed being part of the intimacy without being in it. It made her feel almost like she could catch what everyone else seemed to find. 

She smiled and closed her eyes while the 2 said goodbye and Kit skipped off with her boy.

Their happiness left a beautiful swirl of wind that she stepped into and twirled with. The feel of it made her want something like it so much. She knew it was impossible but she still wished with all her heart. She wished for the kind of love that consumed and where 2 became 1 together and there was no other but just an extension of yourself. And when you weren’t together it felt like half of you wasn’t there. 

Something touched her heart like a teardrop and her breath quickened and she couldn’t breathe. Something was amiss. She could hear the wind push a little closer to her and it felt squished like there was too much of it for how many people were in this world. It was getting more and more packed these days but this time something had changed...

Finding Your Other

There was a stone fox in her.

Her fingers breathed feathers and her clever eyes blinked and stars bloomed.

Journeys of memories fast forwarded and the twitch of her thumb turned it off.

There were too many memories to sift through.

But her mind was elsewhere.

Her wild nature was feeling a little tame and she had to run it off.

She sprinted and leapt through the long grass and weeds.

The field brushed past her in streams of sunlight and shadows.

Her touch was so light the grains of dirt she touched barely moved.

There was a newcomer.

And she sensed it.

The air shifted in sparks of excitement and the barely perceptible sounds of insects buzzed infinitesimally that much more that the vibrations of their wings felt shakier to the feel of her skin.

She went to reach for it with her mind but found nothing - like the strange emptiness which seemed to happen each time this occurred.

She had never been this close before so she quickened her pace so that she could reach out and comfort it like a child.

She wanted to teach someone new the way of the Stone fox.

There was no real definition but that she was clever and wild and had a mane of crazy thoughts flowing through the strands of her hair.

The glistening rainbow of ideas cascading through the air ever still and catching while her pace pulled her through.

She came to an abrupt stop as the wind she caught while running, swirled around her and past her. She saw the figure of a man looking around confused. Gently she pushed a greeting to his mind and he looked around in surprise. She approached slowly generating a gasp of breath from his lips.

He lifted his hand to his eyes to rub them and looked again. Her eyes never left him.

He could feel her and he didn’t understand how that was possible.

Her thoughts brushed past his short grassy blond hair. He couldn’t touch a single one but felt the beauty of something carelessly sure and wild.

She was the most raw beauty he could ever remember seeing - which, due to the lack of his memories, wasn’t saying much. However, he knew with certainty that he wouldn’t find anyone else like her and was grateful for the sight of her- his fingers itched to reach out and stroke her shimmering strands of hair.

Her eyes dared him to do something wrong and he knew not to mess with her. 

She approached him not hesitantly but cautiously. There was no doubt in her mind now that she wasn’t to teach but to learn.

Someone with no memories and past wasn’t to be filled with new ones but to teach her of the present ness of now

It boasted intimacy and naivety but also moments that were completely new. Not felt since being a child and experiencing the world anew. She wanted to learn the silence of this childlike mind. 

He felt her thoughts again leaping through different cuts of ideas. It excited him and he wanted to know every single adventure that she had partaken and knew he never wanted to leave her side.

His certainty startled him. He had no idea where he was and he was pretty sure he was usually quite certain  in the life before he could remember.

It was a blank journey that he wasn’t sure he wished he could remember. 

How did he get here?

He both felt that question directed at him and his own thoughts generate it at the same time.

He looked into her eyes and told her that he didn’t know without breaking the silence. 

She nodded. This was the way it would go.

She reached out her fingers and grasped his in hers and pulled him along at a pace he wasn’t sure he could match. He watched her mane of shimmery rainbow blonde hair gallop through the air as he stumbled along barely keeping up. He felt her thoughts always at the very edge of his own like she was holding his hand with her thoughts as well as physically. He felt the tug on both and it was a wave of tug o war between them- him weighing her down of course. 

Her pace slowed down and he caught up with a jumble of limbs barely keeping upright. She stopped and he looked around finally checking where they were. He couldn’t see over the long blades of grass all around them and he was thoroughly aware of how alone they were and how close he was to her. Her eyes darted back and forth and then stared back at him. He stared and found flecks of gold and shades of autumn leaves in her eyes. He reached out with his other hand and went to stroke her face and she leant into his touch and closed her eyes. 

He was amazed someone so wild let herself be so comfortable with him. She opened her eyes and they stared into each other’s eyes. She shared a memory from long time past. 

Her feet were cold and the snow had made it slippery for her to journey through. She started slipping and sliding as she went out onto the ice of a lake. She remembered feeling out of her depth and very unsure of how to be and wishing she had had someone with her to hold her and not let her fall. She eventually figured out how to glide across efficiently but the longing for another left an imprint in his mind.

He came back to now and pulled her close and held her in his arms though he knew if she didn’t want to be there she would run away in an instant -but she stayed. And he felt complete. 

New unwanted distractions

There's turmoil in my head

It feels amazing and it messes with

All the things I know to be right

And wrong and I can't help it

It makes me want more

And more and I don't want to stop doing

The things I know I shouldn't

It feels right but I know it's wrong

It calms me, overwhelms me, picks me up and makes me get swept away with the curling velvet waves and then creates war turning me up and over and upside down and

I don't know what to do to make it right

Because it goes over and over and over

Again and I can't stop the tumbler turning

And I can't end what I love

The Climb

Change isn't something that happens instantly. More a decision to change that does that. 

It seeps away at our very cores. The problems that plague away into us until we finally make the snap decision. I better do something about this! 

That's how Zoe felt this afternoon. A tide of emotions and issues that flooded her finally ebbed away with her final decision. And she forgot everything...

The star let her see into a world she had no knowledge of and no preconceived perceptions. She was a child and this world was her parent. It would teach her the ways and she would make many more mistakes but she would be free to make them without pressures of rules that were made up by millions of others like her. 

This world was different. There were no other humans around and the silence was very peaceful. She could hear much more in fact. Nature was overwhelmingly busy but also beautifully peaceful.

She turned and found herself facing a beautiful orange tree. The colours were lovely and welcoming against the warm blue sky. She wanted to reach up and take one. She was suddenly so hungry and she wanted to taste the sweet citrusy juiciness of that gorgeous colour.

Something jumped out at her though and startled her to the ground. The grass was soft under her touch and she recovered quickly. She found a strange little creature protecting some nuts. It had a little pile of them just under the spot she had almost trodden. She looked at it apologetically hoping it didn't try attack her again.  

She lifted a hand out to see if the creature might be friendly but soon realised it was facing its back to her.

She shook her head and slowly got up carefully avoiding the creature. She got to the trunk of the tree and tried to reach up to the first branch. It took a bit of a leap but she grabbed hold of it and managed to lift herself, her arms wobbling a little. She was exhausted after the first part of the climb and had to sit down on the branch.

She saw a few oranges but they weren't as ripe as the ones further up. So after a breath or two she climbed further. As she went up, the branches were a bit closer together and she found it easier to manoeuvre and came to an almost spherical brightly glowing orange. She wrapped her hand around it, tugged at the branch, then twisted it off and started peeling away the outer layer. 

Each peel she dropped to the grass like a finality that bespoke the end of the fruit's life.

She bit into it and it was all she imagined. The sweet bursts and pops of flavour filled her mouth and dripped down her chin. She found another and another and after 3  decided that was quite enough. 

She looked down and saw the orange peels far below her and felt a little dizzy. The climb had been easy when she was looking up but getting down was suddenly making her feel a little queasy. She gripped the branch she was on a little tighter and found herself calling out to see if anyone was around. She saw some small movement down below but realised it was the same creature she had seen before shuffling around with a few nuts. It was so tiny now and her head felt a little waver-y and slow. She quickly looked up and breathed slowly and then tried looking down again but the dizziness was getting worse.

Her fingers were slipping and her legs were unsure of what they were doing. There was something shiny glinting from in her pocket and she quickly grabbed hold of it and let go of the tree altogether. Instead of falling to the ground though, she floated down with the dazzling object in her hand leading the way.

Her body felt light as she ended up in the soft grass once again. She hid the star away in her pocket again and felt herself slip into dreams far beyond conscious thought. 

The little creature eyed her body suspiciously and then went back to collecting the orange peels to carry its stash of nuts. Later the creature discovered the orange peel had flavoured the nuts in an interestingly new flavour. 

The girl, it noticed, had disappeared as suddenly as she appeared and it wondered how it could find her and get her to drop some more orange peel again.