Do you feel it like I feel it.


                                                    Do you feel that space between us. I can’t see it but I know that I have never felt something more beautiful in my life. That space began to slowly grow when we walked through that suburban street on a summer night where the homes looked like overgrown monopoly houses and the trees were carefully cut so not a leaf was out of place. We walked along that winding road that would become so familiar as the sky swirled in a melted ice cream of mango and peach and let our bodies amble barefoot as we pushed and ran and sometimes let our hands meet in the middle, only to brush for a second. When I was hurting you and you wanted me and I wanted him. We would talk for so long that our words would slow down and bleed into each other until it didn’t matter if we were speaking, just the slow breath of the day drifting away was all we ever needed. I didn’t feel it like you felt it then. But I started to.


                        Somewhere between the cigarette stained whispers, the confusion between the right and left earphone as we stared out at the water and the drunk promises of what we would be, in time. Did you feel it like I felt it. The ability for us to only want us. The feeling you have before you jump. Before you run in sports day and you know your parents have missed work especially. Before you speak to that person who has been making eyes at you from across the room. I felt that space between us where we could have been but we choose not to be. That was the best feeling. That was when the space radiated.


                                And did you feel it like I felt it when we let go. When we filled that space between us with leaving the party together, sweaty hands intertwined. We filled that space with songs that made us think of each other. We filled that space with desire and passion and anger and endless affection. We filled that space with late nights that bled into late mornings. We filled that space with shared clothes and toothbrushes and lavender. It was filled with moments of utter bliss and understanding. It felt like constantly waking up after a  big party and everyone’s still asleep from the night before and you are able to watch the sun kiss the ground that had been touched by a crisp white dew and you listen to that song that you  listen to on the tube ride home and wish you were in a different place and blow on tea that has too much milk in it. It was peace. It was filled with plants and words not spoken. That space was filled with love.


               Did you feel it like I felt it when the space began to evaporate. Holes started to form in the balloon and the warm air that once encompassed the space was trying to leave. And no matter how much duct tape I put over the holes, it wasn’t working. The space started to fill with pain. It filled with the ache of a heart that has been stoned. It was filled with vicious words and awkward silences and both of us begging that the other would say exactly what we wanted them too. You stopped feeling it like I felt it.


                                                                             The space was now comfort and it was complicated and you didn’t want the space as much as you used to. You didn’t want me the way you wanted me when I wanted him. But I had never wanted you more.


I had to save my side of the space, because you didn’t feel it like I felt it. And when the colour of my space was yellow and red and bright and yours was black and brown it created a colour that neither of us wanted.


The space between us will never feel the same.

Until we both feel it like we felt it once again.


And I had to save my space so that hopefully, one day, my space can be beautiful again.