Two 30-something singles stuck in a time loop are forced to relive the worst days of their lives, so they team up to find a way to break the cycle. For fans of Palm Springs and Oona Out of Order, NOT YOU AGAIN offers a fresh new take on the Groundhog Day story.
In Julian, California, every day is April 22. Most people have accepted the loop—after all, reliving the same day every day, there’s nothing to lose. Day drinking until you pass out? Yes. Partner swapping? Why not.
But Carly has woken up at her dad’s funeral exactly 238 times, and she wants out. She doesn’t want to waste her life away reliving the worst day ever in the small town she always hated visiting. Carly wants to go back to writing film scripts in LA; she’s determined to find a way to break the cycle.
She discovers an unexpected kindred spirit in Adam, the mortician she met at her dad’s funeral. April 22 was also one of the worst days of his life: his fiancée admitted to cheating on him with his best friend. Every day Adam wakes up on April 22 to his ex-fiancée’s admission, starting each day with a breakup. April 22 was supposed to be his last day working for his parents at the funeral home, and the start of his new life as an astronomer. Adam is a man of science, and like Carly, he believes there must be a way out of the time loop.
Together, Carly and Adam team up to find out what’s causing the time loop. And in trying to find a way out, they also find their way to each other.
DID YOU ENJOY WHAT YOU JUST READ? IF YES, THEN SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG, GIVE THE POST A LIKE, OR LEAVE A COMMENT! NEW POSTS ARE UP EVERY TUESDAY & THURSDAY!
Sometimes the end of everything sneaks up on you when you least expect it.
I read that once, in a Gloria Diamond novel. Only she was referring to an asteroid. For me, the end came as a 32 DD red lace bra.
It happened on a rare rainy day in LA, two months after my thirty-third birthday. Two days after my mother had died.
She had collapsed quite suddenly in her garden, my mother. And forty-eight hours later, I found myself numb and standing in the open doorway of my walk-in closet in my underwear. I knew I needed something to wear to the funeral home to discuss arrangements, but I couldn’t figure out how to step inside the closet and choose what that should be. Young woman with newly dead mother. It was a role I didn’t yet understand and didn’t want. I stared at all my clothes blindly, as if I’d never seen any of them before.
“How about this?” Jase stepped around me, walked into the closet and pulled out a hanger with a simple black shift dress. Was it mine? I had no memory of buying it. The tags were still on.
“She hated black,” I reminded him. My mother had been in love with color, from the pink azaleas in her garden to the color-splattered abstract art she made in her studio to the bright orange plates she’d serve us brunch on each Sunday.
Jase raised his eyebrows, and I took the dress from him, ripped off the tags and quickly slipped into it. I glanced at myself in the floor-length mirror. The dress was shapeless, and I looked pale and powerless.
Jase walked up behind me and hugged me, whispering one more apology over not being able to accompany me this morning. His shooting schedule was intense. The director would get mad if he called out last minute.
“It’s fine,” I told him, again. Work was work. And he had fought so hard to get this far. It wasn’t like I could be mad he hadn’t planned ahead. No one could’ve expected my healthy fifty-eight-year-old mother to collapse in her azaleas when shooting schedules had been made. I’d just wrapped shooting on a supporting role in an indie film, so luckily my schedule this week was clear. My mother always had impeccable timing.
“Are you sure?” Jase released the words slowly, tickling my ear with his breath. When I nodded, he spun me around, planted a gentle kiss on my forehead. He took a step back, nodded approvingly as he glanced over the blah black dress, then flashed what I knew by then was his TV-doctor sexy grin. The smile was an apology, or a promise, or maybe by then it was more like a tic. Since he’d taken on the role of heart surgeon/ heartthrob on the überpopular Seattle Med last year, my boyfriend’s face had become familiar to every woman in America. But it had come to feel strangely unfamiliar to me.
“I’ll be okay,” I heard myself saying. And in spite of everything, I was still a good actress. I sold it.
“I know,” he said easily. Then he shouted after me as I walked out: “Call me if you need anything, though.”
“I won’t,” I yelled back.
But it turned out, I did need something.
Halfway to Pasadena on the 10, I realized I hadn’t grabbed my wallet, and I called Jase to see if he had time before the shoot to drop it off, or if he could at least text me a picture of my credit card so I had the number to pay. But Jase didn’t pick up, and if he’d already left for his shoot, he’d be no help.
I sighed and got off the next exit on the freeway to circle back. I knew I would be late for the appointment now; my mother had abhorred lateness and, more, she had never understood what she termed my spaciness—a lifetime of forgotten wallets and missing socks. But then it hit me, she would never know about this. A dead woman couldn’t get angry. And suddenly I had to pull off to the side of the on-ramp because I couldn’t see the road through my tears.
By the time I made it back to our apartment again, my face was puffy from crying, and I clutched a crumpled tissue in my hand as I unlocked the door. I was blowing my nose as I walked inside, so I almost didn’t notice that random red bra strewn across the floor until my foot caught on it in my path to the bedroom.
And even then, I disentangled it from my foot, picked it up and tossed it aside. I couldn’t process what it was, why it was there. I kept on walking like an idiot to my bedroom; all I knew in that moment was that my wallet was still sitting on my dresser. I opened my bedroom door and suddenly everything—and nothing—made sense. Jase was lying on our bed completely naked, a blonde woman with too-bronze skin, also completely naked, straddling on top of him.
“Jase?” I ran toward the bed and said his name like I was in some stupid movie of the week, and I was too naive to understand what was happening. What had been happening, right in front of me.
The naked woman turned at the sound of my voice and then I recognized her: Celeste Templeton, Jase’s gorgeous twenty-two-year-old Seattle Med costar.
I had this weird moment after she turned where I was nearly eye level with her breasts, and I found myself wondering if they were real. They couldn’t be. No one had authentic breasts that large and that perfectly symmetrical. Did they?
“Shit, Melly. It’s not what you think,” Jase said. But he didn’t move right away, and neither did she. Until she finally shifted off him to grab a blanket and I noticed her breasts barely moved. Definitely fake. I was trapped inside some awful cliché, and all I wanted to do was run. I had to get out.
“I forgot my wallet,” I finally heard myself saying, my voice coming from somewhere far away, above me, apart from me, the way it did when I auditioned for a role. I grabbed my wallet from the dresser and tore out of the room, then out of our apartment.
Just as I stepped outside, it started to rain. It had been raining on and off all week, and rain had been forecasted for today too. But I stood there, letting the water wash over me because, of course, I’d forgotten my umbrella too. And there was no way I was going back inside for it now.
Water flattened my curls and ran down my face, pelted my arms and soaked my ugly dress. My skin felt both numb and raw at once. But I stood there, in the rain, as the understanding hit me, that everything I was and everything I thought I knew, suddenly it was gone, just like that.
DID YOU ENJOY WHAT YOU JUST READ? IF YES, THEN SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG, GIVE THE POST A LIKE, OR LEAVE A COMMENT! NEW POSTS ARE UP EVERY TUESDAY & THURSDAY!
THE NIGHT OF KAMILAH VEGA AND LIAM KANE’S FIRST ENGAGEMENT PARTY
LEO VEGA ALREADY KNEW WHAT WAS IN STORE FOR HIM WHEN HE knocked on the door in front of him, but he did it anyway. The situation was too important for him to ignore.
“What?” the grumpy voice said from the other side.
“It’s me,” he said.
“I know who it is. I have a camera doorbell.” Leo could practically hear the eye roll. “What do you want?”
“We need to talk.”
“I’m not really in the mood to talk.”
Leo knew that he had two options if he wanted to be let in: be annoying or be cajoling. There was a fifty-fifty chance with either option. It all depended on whether the person on the other side of the door was more pissed or more hurt. His best guess was pissed because of the hurt. He went for cajoling, praying it worked. “Come on. Open the door. I just want to check on you.”
There was noticeably less anger when the voice responded, “I’m fine.”
“I need to see you with my own eyes.”
A snort slash growl. He moved close and put his forehead against the door. “Please, bombón,” he said in a deep murmur. “Let me see you.”
A hiss of annoyed breath filtered through the door, but it had obviously worked.
He heard the locks being disengaged and he stepped back when the door swung open. There she stood, still in the body-hugging dress she’d worn to his sister’s disastrous engagement party. She looked almost as perfect as she had when she’d first walked in and nearly caused him to stroke out on the floor, except for one thing. All the immaculate makeup on her face was gone and her eyes were swollen and red rimmed.
He knew there was a good chance she’d push him away, but he couldn’t stop his response. He stepped into the apartment and palmed her damp cheek. “Come here.” He pulled her into a hug and was mildly surprised when she let him. “Ay, mi Sofi.”
Sofi didn’t respond, she just buried her face in his neck and squeezed him.
He tightened his hold on her and firmly told himself to ignore the way her body felt against his, but it was impossible. It always was. It had been since they were teens. Sofia Santana just did something to him on every single level. To attempt to ignore her was like trying to ignore being tased. Even if he managed to shut his thoughts down, his body wasn’t going to let him not react to the inundation of sensation.
“What happened?” he asked after a few minutes of silence. “All I could understand from a blubbering Kamilah is that you left because you’re mad at her.”
Sofi pulled back. A scowl appeared on her face. “Of course it’s all because of me, right?”
Leo frowned. “I didn’t say that. I’m just trying to understand what happened.” It was hard for him to believe that she hadn’t known about this whole fake engagement stunt either. He’d figured that she had to be in on it too. Kamilah and Sofi did everything together from the moment they met. It was often annoying to him just how close they were.
“She lied to me,” Sofi said.
“She lied to all of us,” he pointed out. He was angry about that too, but Sofi wasn’t the type to get so upset about something like this. At the end of the day Kamilah and Liam faking an engagement to keep their grandpas from selling the family businesses they wanted to run didn’t really affect Sofi that much. It wasn’t like she had a stake in either business, not like Leo did.
Sofi pushed away from him. “Not about that,” she scoffed. “I knew about that stupid shit with Liam. I warned her about that blowing up in her face, but she did it anyway.” Leo suddenly remembered something else that had come up. Something that had affected Sofi. “You didn’t know she’d turned down the scholarship in Paris,” he concluded. Kamilah and Sofi had planned to move to Paris together after high school, but when their abuela got sick, Kamilah lied to everyone and told them she hadn’t gotten the scholarship that would have made the move possible.
Sofi actually growled in anger. “Can you believe that bullshit?” She stalked down the short hallway into her living room. “Not only did we say we were going to do that since middle school, but we had plans. Firm plans. I had a school lined up! We were looking at apartments!”
Leo could understand how that would be frustrating at the very least, more likely heartbreaking. “Why didn’t you just go anyway?”
Sofi let out a bark of unamused laughter. “Have you met my mother? You think she was going to be okay with me going to Europe by myself? She didn’t want me to go even with Kamilah, but once Kamilah wasn’t an option…”
Leo knew Sofi’s mother pretty well and Alicia Santana was not someone you ignored when she put her foot down. However, she wasn’t an unreasonable person and she trusted her daughter. “I don’t know, bombón. I think she would’ve come around eventually.”
“You don’t get it, Leo. Once Kamilah said she wasn’t accepted, everything changed for me. I had to—” She cut herself off. “Forget it. That’s not the point. The point is that not only did she lie to me, she kept this a secret for twelve years.”
Leo wasn’t exactly as upset about the situation as he could be. The truth was that he’d been keeping a secret from his sister for longer than that. So had Sofi. “I understand how learning all this would upset you, but Sofi, come on.”
She spun on her heel and gave him a look that said, You’d better not be saying what I think you’re saying, while her mouth said, “Come on, what?”
He gestured between the two of them.
Sofi arched a brow.
“Are you really going to make me say it?”
She crossed her arms and looked him up and down. “I guess you’d better because I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He gave her a look. She couldn’t be serious.
“Sofi…” She pursed her lips. Leo sucked his teeth. “Sofi, we’ve been together on and off for how long now? Since you were like fifteen?”
“First of all, we kissed once when I was fifteen and then nothing happened again until much later. Second of all, we have never been together, we have sex when we are both single, bored, and horny, which is not the same thing.”
Leo didn’t let the hurt that statement caused distract him. “Yet, never once did you mention it to Kamilah and you forbid me from telling anyone about it, because you don’t want it to get back to her.”
“I don’t want you telling everyone and their momma about it, because who I sleep with is nobody’s fucking business but mine.”
Leo had to roll his eyes at that. She was so weird about people “knowing her business.” She tended to think that her life was so interesting that it was some sort of gossip fodder. It was ridiculous. She worked at her father’s company, went grocery shopping with her mom every week, and liked to go dancing with her friends on the weekend. Her life was not that different from plenty of women he knew. Shit, their secret relationship (because it was a fucking relationship) was probably the most interesting thing about her life. “You never want her to find out, because you know she’ll be upset about you lying to her. Sort of how you’re mad now.”
“Are you really throwing this in my face right now?”
“All I’m saying is that it’s not easy to tell people stuff you know will hurt them, so maybe you should give her a break.”
Her eyes widened. “Give her a break,” she murmured to herself. When she looked at him, there was anger and shock in her expression. “You really are standing in front of me not only defending her, but trying to guilt me out of feeling my own emotions right now.”
“I just think given the circumstances we both owe her—” “I. Don’t. Owe. Her. Shit.” She accentuated each word with a clap of her hands then paused, screwed up her face, and shook her head as if disgusted. “I don’t owe you shit either. Why am I even having this conversation with you?”
“Sof—” “I should’ve known that at the end of the day you were going to pick her side over mine.”
“How do you figure?”
“Because, Leo, that’s how your family operates. Y’all are all open and friendly and welcoming until something happens. Then you close rank like a bunch of elephants circling around the weakest members of the herd. It happens every time Big Sam and your tía Iris break up. It happened when Chase left Kamilah. Y’all still barely talk to your tía Alba’s husband after he said Puerto Rico should become a state.”
“Not true,” Leo argued. “He said that Puerto Ricans on the island wouldn’t be able to run a country without the US, so they needed to be a state which is different than just saying that Puerto Rico should be a state. And we hardly liked his conceited and low-key racist ass before that. Plus, you were just as mad about that as the rest of us were!”
“That’s not the point, Leo!” she yelled at him. “Then what is your point,” he yelled back. “Because you aren’t making any fucking sense.”
“My point is that I’m done. I have no interest in doing this with you, your sister, or anyone else in your family.”
Leo froze. His body going cold. “What does that mean?”
“That means that I’m not making up with Kamilah. I’m not coming around El Coquí anymore.” She paused and looked him right in the eyes. “I don’t want you coming here anymore either.”
Leo scoffed. “You always say that and then you text to ask me what I’m doing and tell me to come over.”
She passed by him to open her door. “Yeah well, why don’t you go home and wait for that message?”
“Sofi,” he began.
“Bye, Leo. Have a nice life.” Leo growled. He hated when she pulled that dismissive shit with him and she knew it. “You have to be the most stubborn person I’ve ever met,” he called.
“Didn’t I already tell you goodbye?”
“One of these days, you’re going to push me too far and I’m not going to come back.”
“Maybe I’ll be lucky and today will be the day.”
Annoyed that she was being so stubborn and unreasonable, Leo stormed out the door. It closed with a snick behind him and Leo fought the urge to flip it off. Instead he stomped down the stairs to the front door of the building. He hated that Sofi did this to him. She’d push him away just to prove that she could. But she didn’t actually want him to go anywhere, which was why she always called him back. She’d do it again this time too. He knew she would, because—no matter how much they fought—they couldn’t live without each other.
This was not an ending. It was only an intermission.
DID YOU ENJOY WHAT YOU JUST READ? IF YES, THEN SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG, GIVE THE POST A LIKE, OR LEAVE A COMMENT! NEW POSTS ARE UP EVERY TUESDAY & THURSDAY!
Jenna’s never let her cerebral palsy get her down. But when she discovers that her condition was actually caused by an injury at birth, she’s furious with her parents, who withheld the truth. And as they push her to get yet another difficult procedure, Jenna feels her control over her life starting to slip.
Enter Julian, Jenna’s childhood crush. He’s just moved back to town, and he’s struggling in school, so Jenna reaches out to him―anonymously―to help. Soon, their conversations are about so much more than class. She’s falling for him all over again, hard and fast. But would Julian still be interested in her if he knew who she really was? And can she find a way to take back her own narrative before she pushes away everyone she loves?
Grade: B
Review:
I really appreciated this book in regard of enlightening teens on what it means to live with a chronic illness. The tone of the book, although it illustrates how it feels to live with cerebral palsy, is still a light one in the way any rom-com would be. In a way, this book is still a rom-com since the main focus of the book is how Jenna loves Julian (a childhood friend who moved away but has returned to town and is now in her English class). She’s trying to be a normal teen by getting to know him on a more intimate level through texting, but at the same time keeps her identity concealed because she feels that no boy could possibly fall in love with her damaged body.
I really liked Jenna, so reading the story from her perspective was fun, plus there were a lot of likable side characters as well, such as her best friend Ben and sister Rena. The flirting between Jenna and Julian was totally adorable and appropriate for their age.
I know that some of the premises in the book may seem unreasonable (such as Jenna wanting to legally emancipate herself from her family so that she could make her own decisions in regards to her health when it comes to surgeries and tests). But since the rest of the book was good I could overlook that minor lapse of judgment.
I recommend this book for anyone who’s wanting to learn more about living with a chronic illness and if you’re in the mood for a quick light romantic read.
*Thank you so much to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for the digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
DID YOU ENJOY WHAT YOU JUST READ? IF YES, THEN SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG, GIVE THE POST A LIKE, OR LEAVE A COMMENT! NEW POSTS ARE UP EVERY TUESDAY & THURSDAY
Is that I can’t recreate that feeling of starry eyes
With anyone else.
DID YOU ENJOY WHAT YOU JUST READ? IF YES, THEN SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG, GIVE THE POST A LIKE, OR LEAVE A COMMENT! NEW POSTS ARE UP EVERY TUESDAY & THURSDAY
This is how you draw a broken heart: Dip your fingers in blood and don’t Hesitate to botch the final project.
Synopsis:
This is a book about love and the wounds that it can bring. It explores the exhilaration of first love, the damage of unrequited love, and the distress of abandonment. The poems are little memories that come alive, a journey between reality and fantasy, often mingling as one. Fragments of life depicted in words. This is a collection of poems both cruel and sweet. The poems depict the difference between how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. But most of all, this is a kaleidoscope of emotions that are multiplied and amplified as the reader looks into the window of a young woman’s heart.
This poetry collection is probably the closest anyone will ever get to reading my diary. Many of the poems were written between the ages of 14-24, although there are about two or three that were written more recently.
Some of these poems have been featured elsewhere. Such as:
The Enchanted Forest (honorable mention from Amherst Society in 1997) & featured in a European anthology in 1998
The book is up for pre-order on Amazon but will be available on FEBRUARY 12, 2019.
This collection is perfect for those who are fans of dark poetry, gothic lit, and love poems. Some of the topics explored in this book are: relationships, first love, body image, unrequited love, eating disorders, toxic relationships, death, abandonment, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, and suicide.
If any book bloggers are interested in an ARC just hit me up at: azzurranox[@]yahoo.com
DID YOU ENJOY WHAT YOU JUST READ? IF YES, THEN SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG, GIVE THE POST A LIKE, OR LEAVE A COMMENT! NEW POSTS ARE UP EVERY TUESDAY & THURSDAY
It was a hot, Coney Island summer and we were headed towards the Wonder Wheel. Hands entwined as always, as I pulled off pieces of candy floss. The sugar melted in our mouths, sharing sticky kisses. We laughed feeling lucky for that moment. We had fallen in love in April, and although it was merely July (three months later) we felt like we had been together forever. We were inseparable. No one else mattered to us but each other. We lived on kisses and sugary sweets. We had no regard for day or night, we were always awake, always up to something.
“You know there’s an old gypsy tale that if you ride the Wonder Wheel with someone else, you’ll be together forever,” he said to me, his dark hair blowing into his eyes.
“Are you sure you wanna be stuck with me forever?” I joked.
But I couldn’t imagine my life without him. He was the one person I loved to talk to at any hour of the day, and even when we’d spend the day watching Asian horror movies and eating takeout I’d never get bored.
Like two enthusiastic kids, we got on the Wonder Wheel, feeling like we were on top of the world. Everyone below us was so tiny, and he kissed me at the top of the Ferris Wheel. I could’ve lived in the moment forever. I wanted to live in that moment forever. I wished the night would melt into my veins, and that I could swallow the stars.
“I love you,” he murmured. A phrase he’d tell me so often during the day, and no matter how many times he said it still managed to make me melt. I’d wake up with his uttering his love, and drifted to sleep with him declaring it one more time. I could feel his love embrace my whole being. My heart was full. It had never felt so full before.
And then one day catastrophe happened.
Because fate is unkind to lovers. Fate tore us apart, and ever since my heart has never felt full again. Like those people who can still feel their limbs after amputation, I too, feel this phantom love. Other times I’m just aching for the part of me that isn’t there because he had become so essential to my being.
I often think about that moment at the Wonder Wheel. A part of me hopes that the superstition is true. That fate can be bent and he’ll find his way back to me. Or that time can be rewound and I can find myself back on the top of the Ferris Wheel, our lips sticky with sugar, sharing kisses, sharing breaths, sharing dreams.
The first time I saw you, you walked right past me and I felt my heart leap out of my chest as my gaze followed you and I said, “Who’s that hot guy?” And my then-boyfriend merely laughed and told me how it was a friend, and called after you. Once you returned, your eyes met mine and just like in some lame rom-com it felt like time had stopped for a moment, minus the cheesy pop song as the soundtrack. We spent the night drinking coffee and talking, and something I’d just look over at you as you spoke animatedly with your friend. When my phone rang, you said, “We’ve got the same ring tone,” later showing me how you too, had the same Franz Ferdinand song. You were on my mind for days after that night. It was impossible for me to fall in love with the boy I was with, because you had eclipsed him completely. How can one love the moon, when you were the sun?
The second time we met, it was a cold December night. I had broken up with my boyfriend. Two Capricorns were never meant to be together, our stubbornness clashing in the most violent ways. We met at a coffee shop, one of the few still open at the dead of night. We drank conspicuous amounts of coffee and tried several cakes. You kept drawing me comic strips of myself. It was bliss.
Then you insisted you’d walk me back to my hotel. It was snowing. Music flowed out from a pub down the street. You grabbed me, insisted we dance. I laughed, telling you it was too cold and you pulled me to saying, “I’ll keep you warm, pretty girl.” The stars lit up your eyes, and I smiled giving in. I still was uncertain in regards to your feelings for me. But then you kissed me, and any doubts I had vanished.
Like most wonderful, charming men, you were taken. Of course, I didn’t know that until after. After many kisses and after my heart was already yours. It was too late then for me to try to pull myself free of this twisted love.
You sent me so many letters after we parted. So many roses that I could’ve adorned a flower shop. You made me so many mix CDs filled with your own music and The Beatles, The Smashing Pumpkins, and various other artists.
The fourth time I saw you, three weeks had passed since our last encounter. But I immediately knew that something was amiss. The THE END was written all over your pale face by the way you grimaced when I hugged you. I knew that you were about to hit me with bad, TERRIBLE news.
I couldn’t stay. I had to get away.
You kept calling me afterwards. Leaving messages, saying how we should still be friends. That we were friends before lovers.
Another month went by before I saw you again.
By then my heart was shattered. But you kept telling me how much you loved me. I was reeling on x to truly understand any of it. I only wanted to smash your heart in smithereens just as you had done with mine. I just wanted to burn anything that you had ever given to me, till there was nothing left but ashes.
“I love you,” you kept repeating, like I was a child who couldn’t understand. “I care very deeply for you.”
I kept shaking my head. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true, or else I wouldn’t feel so awful. I let go of your hand.
“Where are you going?” you said, as tears blinded me. I walked aimlessly away from you. I wanted so much to stay. But I knew I couldn’t.
I met you in the City of Love, or most commonly known as Paris. I was heartbroken and crying my eyes out along the Seine when you stopped me and asked me if I needed help in any way. “Are you capable of fixing a broken heart?” I said with a slight embarrassed laugh in between the tears. You were gentle and kind, and although your eyes are of the lightest shade of blue, they were the warmest color in that cold winter day.
You were in the city with your brother because he had a film meeting, and I was there to see “The Soulmate” (brooding musician that made any girl sigh as he walked by) only to find out that what should’ve been a getting back together weekend turned out to be a breaking up for good when he admitted that a girl he was casually seeing was impregnated with his baby. Somehow that cemented the fact that I needed to walk away for good.
My infatuation for you was both sudden and fleeting. I loved the way you held your paintbrush as you went on a painting frenzy, mixing the colours till they transformed into magic. Your kisses were warm, but my heart was cold. I’d touch you hoping that I’d feel something inside of me stir, but my heart was too wounded to even find a weak beat in its dark crevices.
We shared cappuccinos and croissants in Florence, admired Botticelli’s art, and walked along the bridge over the Arno River. You held unto my hand as though you never wanted to let it go, and yet I always walked a step ahead of you, as though I wanted to disentangle from your affection.
And yet the months went by and I kept living in old black and white photographs whilst your world was in technicolor. You didn’t know how dark my world had become, I was so good at smiling in your presence. But tears would plague me the moment I was alone. I didn’t even know what I was crying over. The end of a relationship? Losing the soulmate? Or was I merely devastated that I couldn’t feel what you felt for me?
Love for you was eternal Spring, whilst I was living the most dreadful winter. When it came time for me to tell you the truth and let you go, I watched your heart crack leaving dreadful red marks down your chest and I wished that I could repaint a better picture. I yearned so much that I could distort the world to make it appear as beautiful as you saw it, because I wanted to much to be a part of it, but I don’t think I ever was.
The stars had abandoned me. There was only darkness in my road and you deserved the light.
Our love spanned several cities and many jet-lagged mornings. There were more winters than summers. Always wrapped up in bulky sweaters and coats. Our breaths rising in the cold mornings as we shared secrets and cigarettes.
Knowing you was like knowing the world. I learned everything from you. The good, the bad, and the painful. You were smart, well-read, and the right amount of cocky and charming. You were my beacon of light in the dark corridors of my heart. You illuminated everything that was good or bad about me. Maximum transparency. There was no hiding from you. I was cut open, ready for inspection like a frog that was getting dissected by a curious student.
At night we’d fall asleep curled up – exhausted. I’d fall asleep holding your guitar-callused hand feeling safe. I thought you were my soul mate, but I was young and you were reckless.
Our fights would make the walls shake with my accusations, your rage would destroy everything we had built together. You were such a confident liar and I too young and willing to believe the fables you weaved in gold to blind me of the truth.
But maybe you didn’t want to see the truth either.
So we decked our eyes with stars and would live on kisses and chocolates. We whispered poetry, William Blake, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sylvia Plath, while lying in bed our naked limbs tangled like a fishnet at rest. We lived on music and writing. Your words, my words, soon they became our words till your song and my poems were one and the same reciting the same story over and over again to audiences eager to listen to our heartbreak and love.
I’d drive fast into the night without the headlights on, using the beam of the moon as my guide in the dark. You’d hang your head out the passenger window, your black hair flying wildly in the wind and say, “We are going to live forever!” Because, forever when you are young is infinite.
We shared love, music, tears, and books. We were one.
For a moment we were soul mates.
Now you sing your stories about our love to audiences hungry with desire, and I whisper my poems to the wind because I want my words to be carried across the ocean and caress you at night when you’re asleep and I’m just waking up for the day.
The Inkblotters 