I’ve always been fascinated by the way silence sounds – with the whitest of noises fizzing in your eardrums. I just don’t like the way it makes me feel, I’m uneasy with the way it makes me think and the way it makes me ponder. You can find solitude in silence; somewhere you can exhale – but for me, anarchy.
Don’t stare at me as if you can’t tell what you’ve done. You haven’t just burnt down the bridge; you’ve caused a wildfire that’s volatile, something that has destroyed the whole town. You have marooned the very person that you once called your home, and there’s no amount of “I’m sorry”s or “I’ll fix it”s that will repair what you’ve done.
You used to hop out the shower and we’d talk until your hair was dry and the thing is, it was so long back then and you’d remind me of how unruly it was by attempting to comb it through with your fingers. I like to imagine that your breathing, your delicate inhales, were like a tidal wave pulling me in.

You made feel that I wasn’t hard to love.

I never understood the attraction some people have for winter until I met you – the darker months had always been miserable to me.

It always seemed to isolate me and put me in a self-induced seclusion- because that’s what I learned last year, winter will make you forget all the progress you made in summer. It erased every inch of confidence you somewhat built up by those boozy summer evenings spent with ‘good food and good people’.

Winter meant sitting in bed in the gloom, with no real motivation to get up and go. I hated winters and all that accompanied it; glossy Christmas lights, hot chocolate by the fire and thick sweaters changed nothing of that. Until I met you – because suddenly I couldn’t wait for the year to go on, the time to fade.

I anticipated fairy lights to get blurry in my eyes after blinking too much in the face of the crisp wind and tea so hot that I couldn’t drink it but just hold it in my hands to warm them. I expected hand holding, too clammy and hot to do so in the summer months but perfect for December. I want to see your rosy cheeks and your scarf that you’d fashion around your neck – twice, because of its obscure length – I couldn’t wait to wake up next to you because the night before we laid in bed pressing our icy bodies against each other, drawing lines on each other’s skin and talking shit about anything and everything.
You said you like roses, but I came with fierce thorns. What I don’t understand is why I am the only one bleeding, when you’re the one who held me so tight in your grip. I know that you’re sad and most importantly I know that you think some pretty boy with pretty eyes who makes you laugh until your stomach hurts is the answer; but he isn’t the answer or the light at the end of the tunnel.

He’s just a pretty boy with pretty eyes who makes you laugh until your stomach hurts. And I know that you want him to reach a hand to yours and help you stand again, but he can’t fix you. He’s sad, too. He’s looking for the answer. And newsflash: it isn’t you. It isn’t anybody. Because people aren’t going to teach you happiness. That’s something you have to figure out for yourself.

Molly Johnston