>This is how a story begins.
“I want to tell you a story.”
“No.” He paused. The air was pregnant, waiting. “Thanks.” He looked up at me, briefly, as he said this.
I was on his bed, sprawled out with limbs wrapped around his pillows desperately wishing they were him. The down was caught between my legs, wound up against my knees to relieve the pressure of the bones pushing against one another. He was on the computer across from me, slender fingers engaged with his computer mouse rather than clicking through my body. He needed music and song.
Click. A song I hated.
Click. A song I hated.
Click. A song I hated.
It was click, click, click, a download in this post-modern world to drown out the authenticity of my voice. The crackle of speakers was more real to him than words I wanted to say.
I was silent.
The song played on, a loop of white noise designed to keep us separated from the fragile speech that would destroy us. All my stories were about love. Palms aligned with each other in the dark of the night, I would whisper the punch-line of everything I told him: “I love you.”
I love you. The three most potent words in language and when strung together, they have the power to mend - or break a heart.
“I love you.”
“I know.”
“Do you think,” I began. I faultered. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t turn the music down. “Do you think,” I repeated, braver. “Do you think that perhaps every time you use a word, that each time you say it, the meaning loses its importance?”
His eyes were cool when he turned to look at me. He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me, coolly. He was no philosopher. I was treading in dangerous ground with a boy who rather liked basketball and considered Don King to be the height of clever thought. Rumble in the jungle, I’m sure he would have mused, now that is a smart way of putting things. He didn’t care for the beautiful in language. He cared for the beautiful in the exterior, in the package he could possess. He was a boy and I loved him for being a boy, for being the equal and the opposite of me. As his body shifted to turn toward me, resigned to listening, I was struck with the awe of how it was made as the response and reaction to my own. We align and we aligned and aligned to remind ourselves of the words we could never say.
“What I mean is.. how many times do you think I love you has been said?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on, Queenie, you have to have a guess.” I chided him. My lips pressed against one another and up, a pucker of thought that made it look as if I was sucking on a ripe lemon.
“I don’t think there is a large enough number.”
“Oh, for fucks sake, if we can calculate the distance from the Earth to the ‘supposed’ centre of the universe, I’m sure there is a big enough number.”
“…we can do that?”
I didn’t know. I still don’t know. I made grandiose statements. I make grandiose statements. I sweep the world with my words, searching for the alliance with the other mines. I’m ready to blow convention apart and to redefine. I don’t need a reason to explode, but he anchored me to reality like a red balloon around the wrist of a child. You can’t always pretend you know everything and make statements that aren’t accurate, soon enough someone who is clever will notice you’re full of shit. I never expected him to arch an eyebrow toward me and beg to differ. People are surprising.
“That isn’t the point.”
“Well, whatever, if that number exists then it is that.”
“Hey! You should have said infinity because, really if you—“
“Courtney. What's the point?”
What is the point? That's what I'm trying to figure out. It's how the story of us began long before us and will end long after us. I say I love you to him. Who many other voices have created a cacophony of sound shouting love, love, i, i, you, you? Disassemble the fragment and you have the three most powerful words. When he put them together for the first time for me, they healed my broken heart. This is how a story begins, long before us. It's all been said before. But this is a story I want to tell again. It's a story that will be told again. Over and over again. With slight variation. A new cast of characters. So who cares if I embellish it? It's mine to tell. I asked to tell you a story and you said no. The story began there, in our silence with half the sleeping world and their slow beating hearts.
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