I

Three times, Charlotte leaned against me, jumped off and walked to the pole to hug it. Every time she came back to lean against me again. One of the times I put my hand on her back and said “you’re good,” on the off chance that she was anxious about it all. The words that broke Charlotte open for me were from her own mouth. After Jasmine asked Charlotte why she seemed so happy: “I think I’ve just been so sad for so long. I’m enjoying feeling happy.” 

The moment when she arrived: quiet; clear that it would never be reciprocated; the pitying eyes waiting for me. 

Charlotte messaged me a little after midnight. I’d half been waiting for it. There’s an unfinished energy between us. The second goodbye seemed to engage another level; that brokenness and honesty I’ve been holding on for. 

The line that’s been echoing in my mind all morning: after I said something to her about how difficult vulnerability is: “I shut myself out for a while and now I really see the value in fighting for it.” It’s every kind of beautiful. I have no idea who to fight for. But that line alone is making me consider who it should be. 

Today was Charlotte. In every sense, wherever the ambiguity lights. 

It’d been a week and a half since I’d seen her. But we’d been messaging for hours every day. When I saw her I felt like hugging her hard, for a while. There’s an honesty and a safety about her. It’s like I can almost believe her love is real. 

When we sat we were both in shock. It seemed like the physicality had reset all the intimacy we’d built in messaging. It took a while to warm to anything. She leaned past me a bit, and her upper arms were soft. I’m still melting. I can still smell her scent on me, breaking buds of the softest daffodils. 

That white rush, that floating longing, the sap of youthful love. But why? A scent of that air of quiet attraction. Charlotte, her soft-skinned shoulders, the sliding withdraw of her fingertips; quiet dislocation, unspoken connection. The tendons of two hearts resonating against each other. 

I’m being held suspended in another dimension, my finger in the flame. “It’s raining,” she kept saying, falling asleep in my arms. 

II

Standing in the dark, behind the office, at 5:59. “A little after five” was the initial ETA. The light behind the office just went out. Stamping my foot on the wet cement to try and find the sensor to turn it on again. Today’s been a deluge. It’s 6:36 and she’s “close but not close.” 

I broke down on the steps. Something about stepping into the world with a disconnect waiting for me. The sunlight and the city. I couldn’t see a way. I cried on the steps and then on the bus on the way in. 

The fairy lights were casting white-blue over the gap before the basement of the house. 

   “Do you want to be here?” she asked. 

   “I dunno. Seeing you earlier today, I just thought: ‘I cannot put this girl through this.’ But I really, really like you.”

   She cried into the blanket for a bit. I asked back: “Do you want to be here?”

   “Of course.” The most broken, transparent voice to ever pass my ears. 

   There was only quiet. She sat up and pulled her skirt down over her knees.

We were on two blankets under the Gateway, lying and looking at the red, blue and green light by its side, at the perpetual flow of smoke settling over the pale-pink horizon, and all the shadows surrounding us. 

When we’re there we become something else; we lose each other. Every time I see her I feel a fresh awe, as if I’m dealing with an entirely new person to the person I’ve held and kissed and intertwined with in the darkness. The weak, defeated breath of “I love you so much” is air lost in the night. It’s still on my hands, the scent of sweat and pheromones. 

Somehow, it began when I said “I miss you. I don’t know how, considering the amount of time,” and she said nothing back. It hit again last night, every time I thought about the disconnect. “She’s my prized, forsaken angel, but she don’t hear me cry.”

A thought that hit my mind, waiting for the bus: “Maybe it is over. Maybe it’s always over.” 

The grinding of gears, of rapid connection. The grinding of gears, from first to second. 

I fell asleep with tears in my eyes, thinking to God: “I don’t know what’s happening.” I went to bed at 1:30 and woke up at 12. 

III

The thought was running through my mind all night: “If you’re just going to leave me anyway, do it now.” It was when we were watching the movie. Maybe a half a dozen times the thought broke me enough to form tears in my eyes. I don’t know if she noticed. 

Walking her to her car, after she told me she’d had an awful morning.

   “What happened this morning?”

   “It was terrible. I woke up in time for chapel, but I went back to sleep and I had the worst nightmare. I dreamed I was swimming and my friend’s baby was drowning. And I kept trying to hold it above the water, but the water wasn’t like normal water. I couldn’t get high enough to hold its nose above the surface. And everyone was standing around, watching it happen. And nobody was helping.”

We walked to the park, over a bridge over murky water, and she stopped before a trodden path. “When I was a kid I thought this was the scariest thing.” She started walking down the path, and I followed. “Now I realise it’s only about three metres from the path.” There was a stone seat, as thin and rigid as a pillar, and we sat there for a bit, finishing our ice-creams. 

“Come on. Let’s go in further. It gets even scarier.” 

There was a giant fig tree, looking like it could have housed some monstrous arachnid. Charlotte fell back against the tree, standing on a branch, standing almost as tall as me. The sun was starting to soften and it seemed like there was overgrown grass in every direction around us, with people circling across our peripherals, as if they couldn’t see us at all.