Inevitable

What happens when you fall for someone who is still in love with someone else? Why isn’t there a manual yet? Why do we deny the inevitable? I know it’s always heartbreak. It’s always excruciating pain. And yet I never run away. Today it hit me. I must be a masochist.

Heathcliff

‘May she wake in torment!’ he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. ‘Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!’

Ink

There’s only one way to reach you

I attach syllables and letters,

Yet I stutter through my words

I tell you that I am articulate on paper

You ask me if people like that still exist,

In a time of sexual inflation,

When the spoken word beats the written word,

When sex forgets about foreplay,

When kisses become an inconvenience –

Yes, I still blush when you speak to me

I am flustered and dry-mouthed. I desperately need my ink.

I compose long messages and carefully penned paragraphs

I ask you a million and one Questions.

And I use that same ink to record your answers.

I keep a journal, so that I may carry you around in it, the folded pages embrace all you’ve told me, and the blank ones anticipate all you’ve yet to tell.

You’re wary, and afraid.

And I know we’ve both read more than we should, because there is such a thing as too ideal, as too delved in the world of words.

We lose track of the realm of possibility, of today.

So I pencil in our meeting date.

I wait to painstakingly inscribe my notes on your lips, on your hands, leave you stained with my ink.

And everyone knows how maddening it is to remove ink stains.

But I suspect you’ll want to keep me.