As we walked through the flooded streets of town, I felt as if we should be speaking, and yet there I was not wanting to say a word in case it might break the magic that seemed to be growing between us. Turning my head against the blustery wind, I found she was tugging on my arm, and not only that but was leaning her head against my shoulder. Looking at her, I could see she was squinting against the rain, and although she was barely able to see, she led my every step, and as we walked among the afternoon shoppers rubbing shoulders with the drowned and the damned, she was searching for a place that called her name, and I was happy to go wherever she pleased, such was my willingness to embrace a new of being. With her head resting against me, I leaned in as we waited to cross the road and sniffed her hair. As I did so, her body stiffened slightly before relaxing. She smelled of autumn. That tangy scent of wet leaves first thing in the morning mixed with the odour of strange fruit basking in the glory of a rising sun. It reminded me of being a child, and how beautiful a thing it was to have once been innocent. Humming to herself as we crossed the road, she lifted her head from my shoulder and looked around, and finding what she’d been searching for, swiftly pulled me back. Those eyes. How they searched mine so expectantly, so brown and aged like the leaves being blown about us and the ones beneath our feet. For a second, my shyness got the better of me, and I wanted to turn away but managed to stop myself, and as she lifted her chin, she told me she wanted to eat in the greasy spoon a little further down the way. They do tasty jacket potatoes there, she said with a small nod of the head. As her words floated up into the clouds, I smiled while gazing at her mouth, enthralled by how her tongue was pressed against the back of her teeth teasing a grin. Keeping it there, the grin slowly spread across her lips, and the appearance of two sweet dimples in her cheeks caused me to raise my right hand, and upon that chin of hers, it rested. With neither one of us blinking, the rain began to fall harder, and yet we somehow didn’t seem to notice, or even care.

A Journal for Damned Lovers UK

A Journal for Damned Lovers US

Anthology UK / Anthology US