“Where are you?”, “I’m at the parking lot near the back exit, come yeh”. He leaned over the short wall peering over it to see the step’s below, looking at the people passing by, thinking, though he was trying his best not to he did, he started thinking about how. How was he going to do it, let her go, let her go again, but this time not out of his will, not because of how afraid of he was of the reality she had his He continues gazing over at the houses arranged carelessly over the hills nearby, wondering to himself which ones had the best view’s, which ones were hollow and lonely, which ones were really homes and which weren’t, which one’s had windows open to take in the warm air that afternoon, it was uncanny how ironic it was the day she would leave him would be this beautiful and bright. His phone vibrates again in his pocket he pulls it out “Your bum look’s nice when you lean over like that” he smirk’s, slowly returns it back into his pocket and without turning gestures for her to come stand next to him, she does they stand there for a bit in the silence of the wind, through the corner of her eye he sees her turn her face to the sun and he looks over at her, her light skin glowing in it as she squinted slightly, the little bits of hair that would always play in front of her cheeks and her lip’s pressed together red and eager, the necklace sitting right on top of her collar bones how he’d kiss them bite them gently, the chain leading to the small pendant over her breast’s his tongue on her nipples her soft moaning he scratches the thought out of his head he wanted to be pure the last time he saw her at least, for the sake of whatever it is he had to say next. “Pick a house” “what?” “pick a house and let’s guess by only the curtains or whatever we can see who lives inside it” “really fuck off that’s going to take ages knowing your endless story telling” “yeh but it wouldn’t if you told the story for once” he say’s childishly sticking his tongue out at her.

“ok that one there next to the river with the red curtain’s” “off to a good start then” “there’s a couple there a cliché grey haired old beauties with hundreds of stories to tell old couple,  it’s an old lady and an old man who live in there, they’ve known each other their whole lives since high school, and red, red was her favorite color” “why’d you say was?” “shut the fuck up and let me finish” she throws back with her tongue out too, “ok but don’t forget to manufacture a happy ending somehow or no ending at all you know im a sucker for those” “shut it, ok red was her favorite color it reminded her of the old days when they were young and their love wasn’t compromised, when they could let their hearts dance freely and chaotically without any whim or care for who they hurt, how they’d roam like the wind kissing all the cheeks of the innocent it comes along and seducing them, they’d met when she had a boyfriend so she couldn’t want him the way she wanted to without it feeling wrong, so every day he’d write her a short letter a sonnet written each time in red ink, he said the red was his heart bleeding since he couldn’t have her and that each day it would bleed until he was sure she was his and he made her happy, so he’d keep writing these letter’s to her every day the one rule was she wasn’t allowed to reply them she’d give her response by one day meeting him outside her house under the tree he’d always leave the letters under and kiss him, kiss him till both of them exploded and there was only red left everywhere, “red love red lust red dreams red sky to dust”, so soon when he was coming just before the sunset on one Sunday he saw her sitting there alone smoking a cigarette and smiled, throwing his on the grass and stepping over it, he set his bike on the floor, chuffed up his sweater checked his pits and breath, popped a sweet in, and walked over and sat next to her under the tree. In silence for a bit then he looked at her, she didn’t turn to him, and as she blew he got closer and whispered to her gently “you should be careful those will kill you faster than love” he leaned back and saw her smirk blowing smoke. She said to him “sometimes the things that kill you the quickest the ones that come with short lived joy those are the one’s that are worth running to, sometimes. Without turning to each other again they just watched like we are now just gazed and sat in the silence because they both believed that words they didn’t mean weren’t worth as much as words that they’d leave to wander, speak in the silence as they sat and just felt each other, they started seeing each other but not like everyone else, they didn’t feel like the belonged to each other because love wasn’t defined by what was meant to be at times but really what the heart decided it wanted, “you can not command your heart” they’d say, so he’d just come whenever he felt it calling they’d meet under that tree and just sit at times in silence chain smoking in glee, sit through the sunset and then run wild in the night together.

She still hadn’t kissed him though not because she hadn’t already started loving him but because she didn’t want the letters to stop, and he wouldn’t let her either because he didn’t want to know how surreal her lip’s tasted not just yet, but she had to leave with her family back to France so their affair had to be put on hold if it wasn’t ending, she left him with her address and still every Sunday he’d write her a red letter, red letter of love. He didn’t find anyone new no one that mimic the feeling she gave him, he gave his body to strangers though and took a few hostage as well, she did the same distractions maybe to stop them succumbing to how lonely they were so they used innocent bystanders as their shields from the loneliness, then time passed a year or two and she was back, with her 104 red letter’s that he wrote. One day when he was smoking a cigarette there under their tree he had no idea she’d returned so you could imagine the shock on his face when he got the scent of her deep rose like smell being blown in the wind past him, he’d thought he smelt her before over the months that passed, the few times he sat there to remember but it wasn’t as vivid as this, strong enough to turn to color almost, “Red, red is all I can see, All the pain and desire red has left to be, After floating away in our boat and leaving me to drown in the sea, Red returns to make sure the passion lust has swallowed me” he said to her and she smiled with a tear running down her cheek, again they fell slaves to their love and started to run rampant again, but with less guilt and more innocence, one Sunday after finishing 3 bottles of wine under their tree it happen she kissed him, kissed him so hard and slow with the wine soaked into their lips and their blood dripping with alcohol they kissed, her red lips onto his with the sun between the trees over them, they kissed hard as they could till everything around them turned to red as well. Then she had to disappear again back to france to finish university but she promised she’d be back one day and sure enough she was, they met again under that tree and this tim she had 208 letter’s in red and he had a heart desperate for a response, they made love under the tree in the night passion filled love wild burning passion that was the best kind ripping clothes off each other as they kissed his hands down her pant’s with her hands gripping his back and neck as she was moaning he lays her down over the blanket they’d laid out, kisses her down her neck and over her chest  to her thigh’s, kisses her and eats her out to the point of no return and as he climbs back up to her face slowly he kisses her one more time as he goes gently inside her, and they lived there with her parents still in France for 10 years they went mad, then her mother died and she had to go back, but she didn’t return for a while, 5 years to be exact, so he got tired of waiting and chased her chased till he found her again, she was broken she’d never lost anyone before not like that so she couldn’t tell her heart to stop crying and start loving so he showed her how, he started writing the letters to her again and moved to France to make music there, after 2 more years they moved back and bought that house with the tree, and they’ve been living there together growing old together.”

She turned to him and saw the watering in his eyes, “I thought you forgot how to cry” “I thought you weren’t good at stories, so today is just a surprise for both of us then”. She smiles,

“Don’t go,

I’ll let you steal your favorite sweater but please don’t go,

If you leave every day I will write you a love letter but please don’t go,

I was dying but now I’m better so please don’t go” –H.M.

 She hides her blush but how she crinkled her toes in her sandals made it to obvious for him, “I don’t want to give you the ring back” “but you will yeh?” “but I love it” “well here’s a deal then give it to me and I’ll give you a promise a promise that somehow someway I will find you or we will just happen to each other again, and when we do, I will give it to you” they are staring at each other now, and she’s trying her best not to cry, he’s trying his best not to grab her and kiss her one last time. “So how do we do this then, shake on it?” “really Heath” “well I know if I hug you my lips will start begging for yours and we don’t want that happening because we both know someone wont peer in will they” “what about what you said” “what, oh about him deserving you more than I did? Well that doesn’t mean I won’t want you or want you to want me, though you do though you know the rule’s” “break them” “I will just not yet?”.

He’s holding her in his arms now and he doesn’t want to let go and neither does she, they can feel each other’s hearts beating against their chests trying to shatter the bones keeping them from beating together. He kisses her on the neck gently and they peel away slowly, face each other , there standing with the sun behind her he whisper’s “don’t forget me I will chase you”, she smiles “I won’t, catch me” and walks away.

Riding his bike carelessly in the middle of the road going as fast as he could, he gets a gut feeling that doesn’t really make sense it was like everything inside him was trying to get out burst out more like, it scared him. He gets to the hill next to the forest sits down on the pavement and rolls one up, he sees his favorite old couple walking past holding hands they smile at him through their big adorable glasses “you love watching the sun set don’t you” the old man say’s “it’s beautiful don’t you think priceless and it sits there every day for free” they laugh “a very bright young man keep staring at the beauty then son, stare till you go blind and stare some more” and wave him off. Licking the edges off he gets up and walks to the watchtower he’d never smoked in it before, it was right at the edge of the forest and judging by the view on the ground around him it would have an amazing view so he decided he’d never smoke there till it was worth it, he climbs up and stands in it looking west to the sun he play’s Brother by Matt Corby and light’s the spliff.

Midway between the kaya, he feels a tear come on that he can’t fight, he hadn’t cried in 5 years since his brother left, he came to the conclusion he’d forgotten how to, but none the less the tear made it’s was slowly down his left cheek, and over his lip and onto his lip hovering over the spliff, dropped on it sitting in his fingers in his folded arms, he watched it dissolve in. Staring round as the sky and clouds turned golden, bringing everything around them to glow almost, the most illuminated were these small short rows of bushes with flowers that were glowing red pink and yellow, their fluorescent accenting the green almost like a painting he thought, the air was getting colder, he looked to his left hand holding the spliff and notices the bracelet she gave him after the first time they got intimate, it was missing, he started to panic. “Fuck it I’ll ride back exactly the way I came” he thought, he climbs down the sun between the trees and gives it one more stare before jumping off the ladder, hops onto his bike and starts to ride back as slowly as possible, fumbles round in circles and then finds  after  a while picks it up extremely stoned and start’s to kiss it with the ring on his finger, he gets a whiff of her in it and doesn’t pull his arm away taking in every bit of the smell as if it was the first time he smelt her again.

He start’s to ride toward the main walkway of the forest, where there was a shortcut up into the nearby hills. There was a cement bench hidden between some trees and ferns that no one knew about, or did but never bothered to take the time and sit on it to see what it was directed at he found if you sat perfectly in the middle you were provided with the most unreal view of most sunset’s and today was one of those days.

The sun was just about to disappear over the hill’s but not for at least another 27 minutes, so he set his bike leaning on the bench and sat down pulled out a cigarette directed it to his mouth and lit it, rummaged his pocket for his ipod plugged in and played Untitled, as he sat there smoking slowly and extremely squiffy he noticed two tree’s almost placed together as if they were drawn into the picture of that sunset just to make it worth staring at even more, even more surprisingly they were almost leaning toward each other, one was taller than the other and its branches seemed as though they were trying to wrap around the smaller tree, he takes a drag off the cigarette, it reminded him of one summer night where after a movie they went to have a little smoke together ordered a hookah but none of them had any id in hand, he sprinkled some weed into the top when he thought no one was looking, they started smoking and it hit them how hard the smell was, so about halfway into the smoking two cop’s showed up and started walking towards them, they started panicking, Heath held in the pull he’d just taken, “walk down to the pizza place and I’ll walk round and meet you there” he said under his breath smiling at the policemen. She got up walked calmly away and after head disappeared under the steps he got up and darted past the police with his board in his hand, his heart in his throat they met next to the pizzeria and walked out slowly, every security guard he saw on the radio made his stomach turn they got out and ran into the suburbs, the windy cloudless night was still young so they decided to just roam, they come across an abandoned house, the vines had grown all round it and the bushes and the garden were well beyond maintenance, it had short concrete wall’s that were easy to climb.

They got up and sat on it looking at the star’s “don’t you think it’s so amazing how all these light’s have already died out, I mean it just makes you think, if you try your best to live, live bright free and unafraid that even after you die your light will still be shining”, she looks at him wondering where the fuck he comes up with this stuff, “at the same time though, I don’t want to suffer their fate I want to sparkle while I’m still breathing” “yeh” and they just sat there in silence on that hill as she was leaning on his shoulder and his arm around her. And now as he stared at the tree’s this is all he could remember. And right over the tree bird appeared, flying slowly gliding almost a grey eagle with pale black feathers edging his white wings, and he starts to think about how alone he was before he found her, how left behind he felt, Alexander and everyone else had left to school and he was stuck in between choices, but somehow he was still happy, content that what he was doing was the right thing, just because he was stuck didnt mean he had to stop dreaming, and that’s when he found her, the bird disappeared in into a tree and when it appeared again it wasn’t alone, it was chasing after another one, twisting and turning, he takes a pull off the cigarette, in the sky as it trailed behind, the other one flying wildly changing direction without notice, this brought a nice chaotic twist to his idea of them, how in the beginning he was so eager to have her seeing her once and deciding if he did make love to anyone his first would be her, but she just kept appearing and disappearing on her own term’s, even when he found her, she’d play games with him and he loved it, because like flying they weren’t guaranteed that what  they were doing was save from falling to their deaths the endless pain of heartache, or the end of whatever it is they had so he decided to end it and try to find her again they glide round together and disappear again into the tree’s.

And again it reared its winged body out of the tree’s alone roaming it had lost her or let her go as he did, but he was sure somehow that he would see her again because the story wasn’t over, and as he took one last pull he noticed the other bird reappear in the distance, and the first bird started to chase it he put the cigarette down beside him to burn itself out, picked the two flower’s he’d picked up out of his shirt pocket and laid them on the bench facing the sunset, he named those two birds after them gave the sunset one last turn as he walked away he didn’t want to see the ending of it or if the bird caught the other, he didn’t want to know the end he hated them, the light as it disappeared over the hill let out one last burst of gold which was almost blinding still he got on and started to pedal down the hill, blinking continuously to try and get the burn out of his eye’s and then he start’s to see peoples smiling faces in between the blinks he wasn’t sure if they were really there or not, but they were as real as he could see, though they seemed faint like they were painted with a fading paint or a weak brush, they seemed like ghosts of what real people would be hiding in their mind’s the thoughts of their real selves and that’s when it started that’s when everything started well, happening.

Im crying

I was blind when she was here and now I’m dying

Her love came at a cost, which seemed worth buying

The mirage that turned to reality has left my heart flying

Our roads met at the perfect time, yet another caused a chaotic intertwining

But we gave in to the lust at last there was no more denying

The climaxes of satisfaction we reached were temptations limits of defying

The fear was too real and so ensued the lying

But she’s leaving now and I’m crying

It’s simple yet complicated in the most heart breaking way

Though we are slaves to our desire so this destructive distraction we must play

At first it was senseless and naïve as infatuation could pray

It turned into a passion filled escape in the night, and climbing walls running wild in the day

The kisses and the touching few descriptions could convey

I’d take advantage of the loneliness and vulnerability in the worst of ways

The urges of something real and new, deep as the oceans bay

But she’s leaving now and im crying

The fear of ending another story took over too soon

I let loose this lost spirit id tried so hard to swoon

She was too alive and slowly fading so I ran to another

She took the silence to heart and returned to her lover

I missed the phone calls we made just to let the silence hover

You believed as I did that words we didn’t mean weren’t worth as much as the ones we’d wonder

How just by a breath I could hear all you’d kept hidden under

But the hopes of something to forever hold turned into my worst blunder

But she’s leaving now and I’m crying

I let my heart control me and I was back at her door

After some begging and reassuring with my knees on the floor

All the wits and savvy at my exposure all the Casanovas I could implore

We found ourselves finally giving in again back’s on the wall knees on the floor

Buts she’s leaving now and im crying

The desire of  the flesh turned to words out her lips and then something real

The warmth of her breasts and the endless skin on thigh to me to feel

But most of all how priceless her love would be to steal

So I turned my shaking bones into unshuttering steal

Her skin breathing on mine stuck together unable to peel

The lust too controlling I chose no longer to be part of this devils deal

For the happiness of just another helpless hopeless man

I let you loose again I hope you can understand

That color you left burning in my soul will never turn bland

I promise one day soon I’ll hold and never unleash your hand

Together on joy’s wildest windiest hill’s we will stand

If you love something let it go

Don’t break it in your hand let it feel the wind blow

If you don’t forget it again it will show

The birds will be singing in the tress again

And I will be standing with my reckless restless aching heart outside your window

H.M.