Angel Sheets

B -1

When I think about it, I shouldn't be writing this letter to you, not at all. We should never have started, for crying out loud, my boyfriend of - he was sixteen when we first got together, and he's twenty-four now, so what's that? Eight years.2

Let's make something clear: I do love him. I love him more than I love Justin Timberlake, or Bon Iver, I love him more than my band and I love him more than breathing.3

But the funny thing is, I love you more than him.4

We've been exchanging letters for a year and a half now and I don't think I ever want to stop. I think even if I moved in with you, I'd still write you letters - leave them on the counter top or on your pillow, or in the warm space I leave when I get up in the mornings before you. Let you roll over and find a lovesick note instead of empty wrinkled sheets.5

Except your sheets aren't empty, are they? You've got your own boyfriend. So he doesn't live with you, but he near as damn does. Except sometimes I like to imagine that he does leave you before you wake up, treats you wrong and doesn't want you the way I do. And I do. Want you, that is. If you said the word I'd leave him for you, only you never will, or at least every pessimistic bone in my body says you never will.6

(Maybe this seems out of place, but whilst we speak of empty sheets: I picture that your sheets give you wings. I can imagine watching you sleep, watch your wings furled around you and watch them twist when you turn. They'd wrinkle under your shoulderblades to show you you're an angel. If the sheets didn't give you wings, I would, with my lips and hands and tongue.)7

You remember that painting? I promised you a someday, stood in a park kissing whilst our love, our heart-shaped balloon, floats free. I promised you a someday in watercolour and tears.8

We're not like every other affair, are we? Written words for love and short notes for kisses. When we do brush upon each other in person it's maybe a single fragile kiss like we're hanging onto the edges of the earth. Like something might break if we put real passion into it. Like something disastrous might happen if I touched you.9

I want to bruise you, I want to take you and bruise your hips with my hands and your mouth with my lips. I want to damage you in a good way, I want to have left my mark so powerfully that you can't go shirtless for weeks, that you can't be naked for him because you're so covered and so full of me. I want you to hurt when you walk. I want every last memory and piece of me burnt into your memory, inside you. You ruin me so beautifully; I want to ruin something beautiful in return.10

Give me someday, Brendon, and I can give you forever.11

- G.