He lead me down the path, kicking at splashes of orange streetlights as we stumbled, laughing.

Over the railing, the water glimmered, leading out into the wide unknown. He stopped abruptly and I lurched into him, face meeting the softness of his jacket.; more laughter in between repeated ‘sorry’s. He let go of my hand then; it’s a quaint thing, how he was a stranger to me until yesterday, yet my palm has moulded into the shape of his, and  felt so empty without its clammy presence.

I stifled a smile as he stretched out his arms, looking out into the sea, the edges of his form glowing from the light of the moon. It was late; so late. Like Van Gogh in Starry Night, we stood, isolated, on top of the sleeping town; the stuff of their sweetest dreams.

He turned around, the wind in his hair. My mother was right to have pointed it out. His eyes were incredible. Everything about him was incredible.

‘I never thought myself the type to sneak out at-‘ he checked his watch ‘-11:59 to spend time with a girl I barely know.’

 ‘And I didn’t think I was the type to be invited to an eleven pm sneak out. Guess we’re both discovering things today’

‘Guess we are.’

I walked up beside him and leaned on the railing, our sides only inches apart.

‘I’m leaving tomorrow, you know. We only came here for the weekend.’

‘We’re waltzing on thin ice’

‘With the horizon close to cadence’ The words spilled out of me, as if in a trance. I mentally slapped myself. He didn’t have to know I was that pretentious.

‘…I don’t want to stop dancing.’

My cheeks burned. How.. obscene. He sighed wistfully, looking out to the sea.

 ‘Isn’t it oh-so-tragic, lady Capulet?’

‘The greatest injustice I’ve ever suffered, monsieur Montague.’ I smiled.

 The moored boats bobbed in soft arms of the waves, oblivious to everything. He looked at me then, but in a way that’s different from how everyone else looks at me. He looked at me like I was Helen of Troy, like I alone am the contents of Pandora’s box. Like how I could only imagine Michaelangelo must have looked at the stone from which he will set an angel free.

And then he mumbled, methodically.

‘And so, being young and dipped in folly; I fell in love, with melancholy.’ I tried to restrain my reaction; tried not to burst into a thousand beams of light. He said love. He said love.  

‘Edgar Allan Poe… but surely you could do better?’ Who was this seductress speaking out of my mouth and painting my grins?

 ‘Hmm..’

‘No pressure’ I quickly added.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

‘Between the salt and wrest’ling throes

I’m pierced with arrows of awful woe,

For here she stands in moonlit glory

Afflicting, elating, in all my stories.’

It should be illegal. It should be illegal for someone to do that. It should be illegal for someone to make you feel this way. Like you’re at the summit, aurora borealis behind you, and they say ‘don’t turn around’. Good lord. Good mighty lord. It should be illegal. He should be illegal.

‘Your turn now.’ His hands were shaking as he shoved them into his pockets. ‘Poetry isn’t my strong suit.’ ‘I’ll help you.’

‘…He whispers to me in the dead of night

Forbidden words in forbidden rites…’ I paused, trying to think of the next line. He caught my words, like he was waiting at the end of the waterfall, volleying it up in cold glittering sprays.

‘But bear in mind, above it all

He knows, I know, that I will fall’

At this point he was whispering in my ear, his hot breath on my neck. We’re not touching, not technically; but his words drained through me like blood; Who knew something so simple could be so intimate; Who knew it was possible to make love through a conversation..

‘And what of the dawn, in the case that I did?’

‘Don’t trouble with morn but seal my soul with your kiss’

It was impossible to breathe.

If only I had the power to end my life then and there, feeling that way forever, frozen like that forever.

He broke the tension.

‘Okay, that sort of just slipped out of me but I’ve never- I mean I have no idea how to- … I’ve never kissed a girl‘ ‘It’s ok, me neither! I mean- not a girl but I’ve never- uh boys- uh-‘ Hysterically, he started to laugh; the anxiety and release of it all made me do the same.

So there we were, wayward spirits, finding each other as randomly as leaves on a winding river; fancying ourselves a couple of Shakespeares and Dickinsons; reduced to clumsy, sporadic awkwardness, falling over ourselves at the silliness of it all.

And then he kissed me and the stars fell down.

Cardboard buildings and paper trees collapsed in the winding breeze; the sky spun, throwing sparks and moons and suns into whirling seas and for the longest second there was nothing, nothing but this, but me, but him; nothing but us. And as quickly as the birth of the universe, the eye-blink of a big bang, our feet returned to the ground and we were back on earth. I tried not to stumble, my head reeling.

God knows I wanted more. God knows I wanted to throw my hands around his neck and kiss him until we destroy ecosystems and galaxies, till the world erupts into a billion pieces; till we forget how we had ever breathed without each other.

‘I’d kiss you again,’ He said with his eyes ‘, but it would ruin the poetry’

Yes it would.

You get one.

One kiss for Snow White, one for Sleeping Beauty, one for the Little Mermaid to reverse the spell; one for teenage girls and boys whose lives will never again cross paths.

‘I’ll walk you back to the hotel’ He said with his mouth, and I hoped he would hold my hand again, but he didn’t.

And so we went, talking about nothing at all. As if we didn’t just co-operatively tear down the sky. Isn’t the oxford comma a quaint instrument? What did you think of Gatsby and Daisy? All the while on a bricked road whose yellowness faded more and more with each step.

We’re going back to reality, back to real life with real boys who can’t differentiate Yeats from Heaney or quote you Edgar Allen Poe or call you things you’ve only read about in novels. Real boys whose words aren’t snow globes with the entire world inside.

A heaviness came over me and gathered at my feet, a childish stubbornness in the face of inevitability; We’ve arrived at the hotel, outside Dante’s gate.

There were so many things to say that I decided to not say them at all. He took out his notebook, ripped out a page, folded it, and gave it to me.

I saluted. He smiled.

And just like that, he was gone.

Once I had successfully tiptoed past my parent’s room to the sanctity of mine, I threw myself into an armchair and carefully, I unfolded the page. He must have written it yesterday.

‘To the faint of heart, to the meek of mind

Your glances strike sweetly but also unkind

It brings out of hiding dreams of romance

Small, pitiful, terrified

that you’d deny me without chance.’

And on the back, scrawled in blue ballpoint pen,

‘Ross O’Donnell. 0862258226’