It’s not past seven but the day is dark, a slow trickle of rain coming through the window.

He was rough around the edges, the kind that would come into the kitchen with dirty hands after spending hours under a car; but it didn’t matter did it. She always fell for the men with wiry frames, with minds that ran faster than their mouths, with sad and human people who never felt sorry but always felt jaded.

He was no different, but is anyone really? We would all like to think we are something special, but we are not. We hunger for it, strive to be so on the outside by living in fancy houses and driving nice cars but we are not special, even he is not special. He was so human, in every move he made, so tired and raging, like a glass being blown, about to burst. The moments passed with him slowly, like fine wine, like old memories playing back on a video camera; eyes wild, hands shaking. She almost felt like there was an old film over their every interaction, it wasn’t new, just dusted off for a replay of the good old days.

She would dance around the kitchen in a t-shirt, pants discarded, legs moving this way and that. He would never watch her, too impatient, too hungry. She never expected him too. She would claw at her skin, big angry red marks, as if she could push and pull herself into something different, something new.

He would hold her hands and whisper in her ear, as she tried to be beautiful.

She was.

“If the hands of time could fade and die would I still want time to pass by, or stay like this in eternal bliss, would I forget this is the best it gets?”

She would write it on old paper, in tired notebooks and on the walls in black ink, “would you stay in this place with me, just stay for a minute, we’ll forget about the world even though we’re in it.”

He would pick up her hair and hope she was right, about life, about love, about everything. In the hands of two people there really is nothing, there is illusion, there is figment turned to dust. In their hands, there were promises, old things wrapped up and stowed away, kept for later, kept for when they could. All they had was the hand of the other, and a promise to make things better.

“In the future these will be the good old days.”

Don’t forget me when I’m gone don’t forget that I was here even if we don’t make it to a year don’t forget that I was here. He begged for love a thousand times a day, in each desperate movement, in each hollow caress he said love me. Touch something in me that makes it all better, give me something.

She didn’t have anything, but she gave it anyway.

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