Hallowed Love, Dearest One

By: J.R. Harrington

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February rolls in like an unexpected wind, frigid breezes stirring fine strands of hair, soft as a lover’s touch. A gentle cat brushes around your ankles, purring up at you. Lovelorn, wounds born from losses gained. Each year yearning for a valentine, boxes full of confetti and scorpion suckers, bones and handmade cards.

Short letters tied shut with red chiffon ribbon, kept in an old wax sealed envelope. Rose scented shampoo raked through oily hair, matching hand cream rubbed in carefully to hospital-dry hands. Old rosebud soap, all on theme, scented like the holiday of love. Pomegranate lip mask laid upon your cupid’s bow, waiting for arrow wounds to show.

Popping juice from ruby arils with sharp canines, cracking the inner seeds between your molars. Chewing to taste love, vibrant carmine red staining your tongue and seeping into your gums. Longing for someone to open you up, someone to want you so badly as to break open your ribs and curl gently within the atriums of your heart—someone to need you as they need their blood.

Longing for a blood-red love, broken skin, burst vessels from a lover’s teeth. Perfect bruises on softened thighs, lipstick stains on sharp cheekbones. Makeup in any color, painting your body with the colors of passion. Mascara carefully applied, torn tights rolled over toned legs. Lips lined black, white teeth poking through with each teasing smile.

Gentle hands brushing over your face, fallen eyelashes wished upon. Trying to count each freckle on his face, each hair of his brows, commit it all to memory so you never lose it. Kissing his jaw, whispering stupid nonsense in his ears. Smiling when he tells you how he loves the sound of your voice, grinning when he lets you kiss him.

Oh, sordid tales of loves lost. In the faded moonlight you lose your mind at the fact of losing him. Each breath you think his name, again, again, again. Every time wondering why your clumsy words escaped, why you let yourself break such a beautiful thing. Destroyed promises of forever, plans shattered. Tears down your cheeks, pooling in the corners of your lips, salty like a wake up call.

The blood on your hands looks black in the moonlight. He tells you this Valentine's day is a full moon, says it’s sexy. You think of moon-gazing with him. You think of each night staring up at the stars thinking his name, thinking “beloved, beloved, beloved,” and wishing he was at your side again. Wishing you were reunited in his old bedroom, that nothing had changed and you were lovers again—there you go using that word he hates, “lovers.”

You thought up a million things to call each other. Partners was the foremost. He called you his beau, and you called him your main squeeze. Once or twice you referred to him as your beloathed, in the letters you wrote. Sometimes the divide between love and hate was a blurred line, like oil paint blended outward, crimson red on gentle pink and cream.

Dears and darlings and my loves exchanged, calling him baby with red flooding the tips of your ears. Callous boy laughing at your blushing, back in naive early days. Honeymoon phases every night spent alone together, not going to sleep but laying side by side in bed. Him listening to each tale you tell, remnants of memories shared.

Kind lies told, tall tales of nonsensical journeys shared when he was on vacation and you stuck in that mountain trailer you lived in when the two of you met. Divots from his teeth on your pinky finger, that day he came up for your birthday and tried to bite it off in front of your brother.

Fifty red paper cranes, folded painstakingly, each with something you loved written within. Left in a coffee tin on his doorstep. At the cemetery after he read them all, saying only seven of them affected him at all. He was wearing your sweater, which is his now, all sewn up with his embroidery, repairs done when it was your only warm coat.

Torn jaws from raccoon corpses, paw fur in a plastic box. Acrylic nails torn off and lost somewhere, lying in the grass by a parking lot. Not kissing for a year after meeting, ruining each other for anyone else. Unable to love anyone but your dearest one, hearts that beat in unison.

A hand on your wrist to feel your pulse, making sure you’re real. Uncertain certainty, never knowing when it was right to touch, awkward caresses, cupped cheek and a thumb brushing over dark eyebags. “I’m sorry”’s at every problem. Sitting in the library and telling him you can’t sleep, after that dream where he was afraid of you.

Always at the library, walking there after school and sitting on the tables outside, even in the bitter cold of winter. Watching him draw you, taking pains to be as still as possible. Perfect hands on your skin, tearing past your flesh and hooking into your soul.

The scent of lavender on his skin, his favorite flower. Spells done to summon you, bringing you into his life. Serendipity, meeting by chance and hanging tight to him. Coffee shared and tea steeped, thrift store dates. Writing letters by starlight, things never sent and things carefully folded into envelopes with your wax seal, an anatomical heart for each love letter.

Art classes together, watching him at his work. He’s never seen you write, but you watch him paint and take comfort in being one of his muses, as he is one of yours. Peppermint kisses, borrowed chapstick. A mask left in the pocket of your hoodie when he returned it to you, the biting cold without it. A colder bolder man, always so much more assured than you, far more experienced. It took a year for you to be certain enough to kiss him, and even then you were skittish. Hiding him in your basement abode without permission.

Cowering in the closet, being used as a space heater in his twin bed. Entangled on your antique couch, always out for each other’s blood. Sending photographs whenever you dressed up for yourself, sending hearts and “sweet dreams” every night. Loving him, losing him. Foolish love poems written, a document of poems just for him. Your muse as much as you were his.

Leaning against him. Cold hands tracing shapes on sensitive shoulders, kisses pressed to his throat. Bare skin shown to him, nudist tendencies. A white nightgown with lace on the top, the torso trimmed in with his delicate stitching.

Small kindnesses never taken for granted. The way he hung on every word, cherishing them as dark chocolate on your tongue. Valentine’s chocolate saved through the summer, eaten only after losing him, eaten with the tinge of salty tears on your tongue. He once said that love made him feel like an animal, but it always made you feel more human.

Less of a monster, held by someone. Less of a stranger, when he smiled at you. Early days, his eyes always on you. Saying “nice neck,” like it meant anything, “stupid legs,” like he knew they were your best feature. You hadn’t yet learned his ways, didn’t know that that was his only way of complimenting you.

Holding hands as the stars aligned, sleeping in the same bed at that haunted hotel on his best friend’s birthday. Accidentally saying something rude and driving him off, but glad for the distance when he got closer to you. Staring at his sleeping form, trying to commit to memory the way the night cast his face in blue-tinged shadows. Dreaming of kissing him, finding out later

he was incredibly upset that you didn’t. Him telling you to forget he ever said that he liked you, unable to get it out of your head. Sketchbook papers written on in gel pen, green brocade handkerchief the first Valentines day. Getting him a birthday present he already had, him performing surgery on it.

Asking if he could pierce your ears, shying away and crying when he tried. Telling him he could take your blood when he gets his phlebotomy certification, wondering what he’d do with it. His blood in a painting of you, finger-painted hearts behind green paint. Honoring his devotion with every motion. Watching him paint his face in the bathroom mirror, seeing him tease his hair with practiced ease.

Yelling at people at his birthday party, hopping the fence when he feared the cops had come to break up the occasion. Enamored with his practiced ease, fascinated by every moment of his life you hadn’t seen. Secrets of his that will die with you, silence kept like a holy vigil. Praying to him as god, such a beautiful thing that he couldn’t not consume your spirit, your every waking thought for months upon months.

Making him a CD, playing it for him on your discman. Drawing a scorpion as an album cover, using a red marker for the background and writing each song within. Paint-stained fingertips, featherlight kisses brushing his knuckles. Walking arm in arm down the street. Pomegranate ink you never made him, hulls shucked and forgotten.

Food shared, dandelion cookies. Pancakes eaten from a plastic bag in Goodwill, your own recipe made for him. Always trying to steal the rings off your fingers, not-so-sneaky attempts at theft. You gave him one of your favorite rings; it didn’t fit you very well but was perfect on his ring finger.

There are still wounds on your soul where he left in haste. Little torn lines, leaking energy. A missing part, a missing energy. It used to feel like you were always connected to him. A psychic link stretching between you, spirits connected. Even death would not be able to part you, you thought.

Now each thought you have of him is related to the parting of your spirits, that divide you fostered on terrible nights without his touch. You still love him, fervently, ardently, but you find yourself uncertain if that love is welcome anymore. He has every right to reject it, perhaps it’d be wise to.

It feels as though the years have been wasted on you, a blessing you did not deserve. You received it with scorn and tossed it away, come again another day. Each kiss peppered on your skin stays with you, each touch melted into your skin, sinking to your bones. Hallowed be his name, that boy that would have loved you to the grave.

Hair dyed in public bathrooms, green on his hands. Kicked out and gone to his house to rinse it out, staring at the products by the faucet and wondering which were his. Coffee dates, sitting quietly and weaving chains out of wildflowers, clover crowns worn and heads rested in the same bed. Cutting class just to nap, but never falling asleep. Falling into love instead, falling into each other.

Love is the one thing you understand, love is what he calls nonsense. Each night you meditate on times his breathing lulled you to sleep. Each night you muse on his artist’s hands, nails bitten down and red scabs along their edges. Each night you think of what you would say if he were beside you, rehearsing monologues in your mind, soliloquies just for him.

And every night wondering what he’s up to, what spells he’s casting under moonlight. If any of them involve you, if he’s tried to sever your ties with the same magic they were formed with.