Nuclear

That was the moment. Those precious minutes... When the light escapes the curtains through the cracks created by the breeze. When the heat and the cool kiss of both dance on your skin and make you surface from sleep. And as your sensations return, you feel the warmth, the sleepy breath that moves the hairs at the back of your neck.

Although your eyes are opened and his are not, there is no desire or need to move, but only to stay still and listen to the breathing... to the curtains on the breeze... to the busy humming the light of day commands outside the window. While inside the curtains, time and hurry stand still. Silenced in the warmth of a sleepy embrace.

Those were the moments I enjoyed without knowing. The moments I branded as normal and wiped under the rug without realising. Moments where I had no worries, no obligations, no tasks to complete. Moments where I was warm and complete to the fullest. Moments where I was just allowed to be.

Some days I wish I knew if he regrets it.

Regrets what we were, like I do.

Because without what we were, there wouldn’t be any memories. No kisses shared, moments basking in the sun coming through the blinds on a window. Whispers shared in private in the middle of the night. The heat of an embrace that got into bed far too late.

And sometimes I wonder if he misses it.

If he misses it like I do.

Being so attune to someone that you can hear their thoughts from a distance. That you can sense their moods even when they’re miles away. Loving so hard that hands gravitate to each other without thought - whatever they grab never being enough, and blindness is a choice that hides the lack of a future and sees only hope.

I wonder if his heart breaks.

Breaks like mine does at the collapse of the promise.

When I remember the moments, the sheer bliss of them, plastered over the cracks like wallpaper hiding a crumbling wall.

And I wonder if, in an alternative universe somewhere, we made it. Because the connection we shared felt old. Like we were entangled in another life. Like we have known each other for centuries. Magnets roaming space and time pulled and propelled by each other.

Then I remember… How these are just the good moments. The bad ones far outweighing in number. And I wonder how something so strong and special, can crumble to dust so magnificently. Exploding like an atomic bomb - its breath destructive, its kiss radioactive for years to come. The outcome irreversible, irreparable. So toxic that the only thing you can do is burry the vestige of what once was.

Now, all that promise, all we were, all we could have been lays under nuclear proof concrete, together with the memories of the moments I wish ruined him like they ruined me.

Written by: Paola Santana

All rights reserved.

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This one was a writing exercise in capturing bittersweet memories. Like when you lose a loved one, but still have good memories of them, and the happy memories become tinged with loss.