Some loves are explosive. Fireworks and glitter bombs. Some are quiet. Cosy. Filled with movie dates and walks in the park.
Ours is something… edged. Fireworks are sparklers quietly shivering in delight. Our walks were shrouded in ebony warmth. Deepened nights with long, unbroken conversations along walks of darkened hedges.
Because we sat on two sides of a twisted mirror. He only knew darkness. I only knew the warmth of lazy afternoons. We straddled twilight just to see the outlines of eachother’s faces.
He had asked me out three times. And each time I said no. That was not what good girls did. Kingfishers don’t mess with ravens. I wanted to do the right thing. To be the right thing. I wanted conservative love. Godly love. A love that is simple and strong like a farmhand’s calloused fingers.
But he… he wasn’t that. He was deep and thoughtful and caged. He was covered in shadows and confusing twists and turns. Those intelligent golden-brown eyes dared me to consider another truth.
I didn’t want a conservative life. I didn’t want to stay lounging in the afternoon sun. I wanted something piercing. Something that loved me beyond expectation and culture and familial right. I wanted someone who picked my soul and not the pretty box I was born into.
And he… he wanted more than night. He wanted to climb out of the boxcar the other side of the tracks trapped him in.
So. We danced. Our words soothed each other in the way nothing had before. He remembered everything I said to him. Not who I represented or where I belonged to. Little things. My favourite reading spot. The list of what should and shouldn’t have pineapple. The way my mouth quirked when I thought of a lovely thing. My favourite harmonies to songs on the radio.
In exchange I offered him a safer haven then where he was. I offered a hope he could grasp. A foundation to build from. A place for his heart to rest. We chatted endlessly about who he wanted to be. Where he could fly to. What he could achieve. No topic was off limits. No thought too strange. My strange fears. My even stranger desires.
We shrugged off our personas and held hands through the twilight.
But no one can stay there for long. No one can stand between light and dark forever. Half-life. Winter and spring cannot remain fixed in place. Change comes for us all.
We knew that. We knew I couldn’t hide him forever. And he… he was slowly inching closer and closer to me.
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It burned him. Coming with me.
No one talks about that. How he had to choose because the pain could only be chosen. He had to leave so much. Be so much more. His birdcage opened. But stretching his wings from years of holding them to his chest was… excruciating.
His soul was the same. Those bright eyes were the same. His heart cradled mine with such tenderness I feared we could crumble together. It was not all at once. But neither was it an eternity. Small changes became big upgrades.
He would look at me over his coffee and say, “ever since I met you… things click into place. Nothing is as it was. But you are here. That is all I ask for.”
And now? Were you to cast your gaze at us what would you see? Now? Ten years later? Just your average couple. He exchanged his completely black attire for blue and green shirts. He swapped out his steel cap boots for sneakers. I cut my hair off. Both our mothers cried.
I am not conservative. But he is not progressive.
We are something… deeper. Not twilight.
But Dawn.
A creeping change. A light not as bright as the afternoon sun. But just as piercing. We may never fit into the places our families wish we would. Our pasts still burn us here and there. Our experiences colour us in stripes. Some line our bodies. Others line our souls. Darkness still desires him. And my family demands me to be more like them, casting shadows they refuse to turn and see.
But we belong together. And that’s all we wish for. To collide together for eternity.
Creatures of the dawn.
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