I hadn't planned to see you but knew that at some point, I would be drawn in your direction by an irresistible lull; the force of habit so very much ingrained into my limbs that would lead me your way. And lead me they did, in one heavy tumble.
There you were in that usual spot of yours, so casually splayed were your long, thick legs and your hair swept flirtatiously across your browned brow, your head bowed over your clumsy, rough hands as you peered at them in the afternoon sun distractedly.
I regarded you with a mixture of cool contempt but when you realised it was me as you squinted against the rays that peeked over the rooftops, you bounded to your big feet and threw open your arms, your smile betraying careful delight against a tentative trepidation. I forgot all of a sudden how very dismissive and unkind you could be and moved to your warmth obligingly with hellos and how have you beens.
You placed two quick kisses on my cheeks, your tall hulk towering above me and blotting out the light, enshrouding us in a dark memory that spoke of a time when I was plain mad for you.
I pulled away, my eyes not meeting yours, ashamed to feel that old jolt, and began the rituals of what I hope sounded like disinterested small talk, my hands betraying me as they shook ever so slightly, like a subtle breeze that ruffles a rabbit's flank when caught dead in the headlamps; an unwelcome movement in a painfully frozen scene.
Looking squarely at you now, the intensity from your treacle-brown eyes threatened to overwhelm me as I licked my lips and formed words that I couldn't really hear but proceeded to pour forth.
My heart beat against my ribs, beckoning to my ears to listen to my head and not fall into the patterns and habits my body had lain prey to so many years before when I had first held your mischievous, boyish gaze and knew that our story had started and that I was in trouble- nothing but deliciously awful trouble.
Jerking into action as the drumming reached my consciousness, the floodgates of reason opened and rushed into my mind- enough to break the spell.
Enough was enough of this charade, I thought as I shook off that cloak of familiarity, shattering your hold over me. That is all it ever was- the insanity of a love-starved body, craving yours. It had only needed time and distance to quite distinctly see that it had all been nothing and as I took a few steps back from you, you were both illuminated and destroyed in your beautiful image.
How funny the desires of the body can be, reminding us that we're just animals, really. Animals that strain to fuck, bite and betray in mercy to our instinctive lust; our only difference as humans is the knowledge of our better, moral judgement grappling against something deeper and more savage within.
We were just animals back then. You were a feverish carnal spell- a dark, beautiful bat that cloaked me in heavy drapes, drawing distractions from a life that I felt I was barely living, just waiting in the summer heat for my flight out of Barcelona. You gave me the attention I so distinctly lacked from the boy who had promised to love me but against the blindness of circumstance, had failed spectacularly.
And yet however broken that spell now may be that my senses have been restored and I see you more as a oafish Iberian pig, you were also a small saviour from something much bigger. Your lure broke my personal catastrophe into morsels I could digest and have the tenacity to claw my out of a situation that might otherwise have been my undoing.
You made heartbreak seem easy; you were a delicious salve on my wound; a book bursting with words when I was lonely and a muse for many, many scribblings.
You made heartbreak seem easy; you were a delicious salve on my wound; a book bursting with words when I was lonely and a muse for many, many scribblings.
You bat-pig boy, I don't suppose you'll ever know how I used you to save myself and how seeing you now, the final flare of those last, dying embers warm the thought that you could have been a giant mistake that I thankfully never, or ever made.
