you kiss honeyed words from her lips while her hands rest on your waist. the
fabric of your shirt crumples between her fingers and she tugs it away from
your body, riding up and exposing your midriff to the soft summer breeze coming
in through the window. against your lips, you feel that she’s smiling, and that makes
you smile too as you break the connection in favour of resting your forehead against
hers. there’s hardly any space between your mouths, your breath mingling with hers
in the gap and knotting something up tight in your chest.
you lick your lips. she’s wearing strawberry lipgloss.
“sweet,” you murmur as you close your eyes and she laughs, gentle as the draft
and a hundred times more intense. “sugar…”
“yes, honey?”
you can’t say it, so you kiss her again. the words still feel heavy, like something
poisoned and so decidedly wrong where they sit on your tongue.
and maybe this is what it comes to - late nights illuminated only by the screen of
your phone where you’ve tucked it beneath the covers, holding it close to your chest.
tired eyes threatening to slip closed as the clock ticks up and up, church bells
striking one-two-three in the distance. maybe it comes to secrets that you bury
deep, deep within yourself, secrets that still threaten to boil over and spill from your
lips like a waterfall. and you wonder - by god, do you wonder - why you couldn’t just
like boys, why you couldn’t just be like the other girls you know who only worry about
whether their boyfriend is still using lynx or whether he’s moved to off-brand cologne,
why you didn’t have to hide that you prefer red lips to square jaws.
maybe secrets are a form of lie, but you hide your sunset-coloured love away until the
two of you are alone anyway. dishonesty doesn’t feel so wrong if it’s for your own safety,
you tell yourself over and over. not telling people doesn’t mean that you’re ashamed.
of course, you don’t say any of it aloud. if she asks what’s wrong, you just tell your
violet that you’re stressed, that the essay deadline’s coming up faster than you anticipated,
and she laughs and presses another crimson kiss to your jaw and tells you to take care of
yourself too. she offers you tea. your heart aches as you smile at her.
the pictures that plaster the internet make you feel homesick when you see them. you
wish that were you were there in glorious technicolour instead of the washed-out greys
of your home; you wish that you were kissing her on rose-tinted snapshots on twitter
instead of behind the walls of her bedroom. you wish you could take a chance instead of
bowing your head to follow the status quo.
you tell your mother on a tuesday evening with salt streaming down your skin only for
her to wrap you in her embrace and tell you that it’s okay, that she loves you no matter
what. she wants to meet your - girlfriend. she wants to meet your girlfriend, and you’re
almost giddy on how good it feels to not have to avoid the word, to have to tactfully say
“partner” instead.
your mother starts sending rainbows at the end of every text and you wonder whether
being yourself is really meant to feel this warm.
your girlfriend, all her soft curves and rounded edges, wraps you up in fabric that’s
orange-white-pink and kisses the corner of your mouth in the june sunshine. you
call her “honeydew”, call her “sugar”, you tell her she’s beautiful as she laughs and
her cheeks flush until they match your skirt.
“i love you,” you say, and the words taste like honey.
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