referenced literature: Lullaby (Auden), sonnets 109 and 115
DECEMBER 2014
LOVING HARD, I CAME to realise, was the only way I knew how to love. My love trembled deep within me, always demanding to be felt, and when I denied it, it became ugly. It swelled in my chest until I couldn't breathe, pressed against my ribs with the threat of snapping them, and rang in my stomach like the shock after a punch. When I denied myself the love that burned inside me, that love denied me everything else; sleep, energy, appetite, companionship, juvenility, repose.
For a week after my fight with Bradley, I tortured myself. I clutched the knife in my gut and twisted it over and over, pressing it deeper inside me until blood spurted and spilled out around it.
Thomas, Jem and Clarke had all been right about me and guilt. Not just guilt, but shame and resentment and dread. There were times when I didn't know what to do without them so when they tried to leave me, I seized and clutched them, and begged them to stay.
It was what I felt I deserved, I supposed— all that suffering. There was something safe about it; something that felt as though it belonged to me and I, to it. It was part of my blood, my bones, my muscles, my brain and lungs and heart; some necessary part of me that I could no longer bear to part with, just like my fifth limb.
The year before, when I made mistakes and wounded people and got into trouble, it was rare that I would ever think about it for too long, if at all. Everything could be rectified with a shrug, a sheepish smile, a half-amused and half-sincere apology.
There was something fundamental that had shifted in me since that last year. Something more intense, something less forgivable, and I supposed that it could've been because of many things, but there were two things that I came to blame. First, the fact that I suddenly felt much older than I was, as though I had aged years in months, and, second, the fact that I had finally acknowledged the intensity of my feelings for Bradley, no longer allowing myself to excuse them merely as a sign of our deep friendship as I had until then.
My feelings for him had not occurred to me out of nowhere. I had been almost unconsciously accepting of a vague, passively acknowledged attraction to him as far back as freshman year, if not further back than that. It was not a surprise— when I finally allowed my feelings to roam free, to fill my heart and possess me— that they were as passionate as they were. There had been no singular event or action that spurred me into infatuation. It was not infatuation at all nor had it ever been.
Rather, it had lived inside me for years and gradually developed, lingering, crawling and growing. It was like a planted seed, rising through the dirt and becoming a stem, stretching leisurely towards the sky until the bud formed and bloomed open, petals flourishing around it.
Sometimes it was as though there had never been a time before it; the seed had been planted as soon as we met and lay dormant inside me for years, growing discreetly and shyly until it was strong enough to be noticed.
After that, I began paying attention— perhaps too much attention— to the touch we shared; our knocking shoulders and bumping knees, the back of his fingertips brushing against my own and the jolt in my heart that followed, the comforting weight of his head on my shoulder and the way his hair tickled my neck, the way he gripped me and pressed me against him when he hugged me, the subtle shifts in his posture when I ruffled his hair and teased him by daring to tug it, the way he shuddered when I pressed my palm to the nape of his neck and how he smiled, boyish and shy, when I gently knocked my fist into his cheekbone.
Our play fights began to rouse me so I started them intentionally and often. The memories and images of straddling and being straddled, pinning down and being pinned down, and the feeling of him pressing against me, all made my head spin. The noises he made— the hushed panting, the soft grunting, the quick and quiet moaning when I pushed against him and gripped his wrists— were enough to make me dizzy.
My observations of him steadily increased and I became aware of low heat in my stomach when he changed in front of me; when I had to force my gaze away from him, intimidated by the sight of the muscles shifting in his back and shoulders, the image of his toned thighs; when he spoke to me about Greeks and Romans and their stars and philosophies and poems and my eyes lingered on the sweet, alluring bows of his lips; when our eyes locked and we held each other's gazes longer than we needed to; when I took careful glances at the curve of his throat and imagined biting him there, imagined the way he might move his body into mine and the sounds that might escape him; when he spoke to me in Latin and Ancient Greek, too fluent for me to guess what he had said, but flushing anyway when he laughed afterwards and refused to translate; the private smiles that he reserved for me and only for me.
Even innocently, I considered the curves of his cheekbones and the sharp line of his jaw, the strength of his arms and the sensitivity of his nape, his slender fingers and soft hands, the flutter of his lashes and the clear, silvery quality of his voice; the way it softened into a murmur when we lied in bed together, until his whisper through the dark left goosebumps over my flesh.
I thought of the dreams I had of him; his head tilted back and throat exposed, eyes squeezed shut and lips parted with hushed pleasure; his hands smoothing over my ribs and chest and braced stomach, dipping beneath my waistband, his lips trailing kisses over my jawline. I dreamt of lying in fields with him, sprawled and stretched out under the setting sun, his face a golden blur beneath the glowing flashes of sunlight, his light, silvery laughter filling the air.
I dreamt of us as children, scraped and scrawny, climbing and sprinting, and walking long paths to nowhere, lost in conversation. I dreamt of being lost in a snowstorm and how he had appeared, offering his hand to me, to bring us home and I dreamt of him pushing me into bodies of water and diving in right after me. I dreamt of struggling to climb hills while he waited at the top and I dreamt of returning to an unfamiliar home, just to find him reading on the sofa or eating at the table. Often, I dreamt of him naked. Always, I yearned for him. Even in my nightmares— when home wasn't home and faces were uncanny and eeriness pervaded— he appeared and soothed me without trying.
Recently, I had a dream of us sitting outside on a field. We were lost in a vast space of short grass, the sun burning beneath the horizon, light splashing across my face and temporarily blinding me, flashing red and white behind my eyelids, and I was covered in fresh, red cuts, bleeding all over. He had been sitting in front of me, gently washing the blood away with a clean rag and a bucket of water, tending to my wounds, bandaging me up and sometimes pressing his fingertips gently to my slashed skin to take the pain out. He would kiss my forehead, eyelids, cheekbones, nose and chin softly, his lips barely grazing me, and I would ask him if I looked ugly. He nodded, smiled and said, 'But you're never quite ugly to me. I don't know how to make you ugly. All I ever see is you.' It ended before I could kiss him, the image vanishing in a flash of sunlight, and I jolted awake.
No, the awareness of my feelings did not catch me by surprise. And I latched onto my guilt like a lifeline.
But two days after Christmas, I found myself on his porch, my heart trembling and my shaking hands clenched into fists and shoved in my pockets, nails digging half-moons into my palms, waiting to be invited inside.
It was a combination of things that pushed me there: my conversation with Jem, my conversation with Thomas, the poetry that Bradley himself had given me and, above all, a sudden ugly desire that had begun to consume me. For those first days, my yearning was romantic and aching, filled with weariness and regret, but something changed the night before I found myself on his doorstep: I fell victim to some writhing, clawing urge to see him, to touch him, to be at his side. It was a force I could not resist nor control and it drove me towards him as though one more second away would kill me.
