THE BEACH

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‘If you were to die, I would die with you’

He told me on a summers night

Sun setting as the stresses and complexities

Of the hours previous were washed away

Pulled reluctantly by salty precipitation

Lapping at our toes in peaceful contentment

I stared at him through the locks of my hair

Fingers finding purchase in the folds of my denim dress

Nails clinging onto the threads of reality

Whilst he continued onwards - as if what he’d divulged wasn’t incriminating

The acknowledgement of our mortality turning my cheeks red

Two apples waiting to be picked

The wind caught in my throat

Crushing all response with a titanium grip, airways closing in retaliation

As if I wanted to expel the confession itself

And test his allegiance to a statement only present in fiction and the crevices of my dreams

Left abandoned at fourteen

Once I realised the world wasn't made of fairytales and princes

‘I’d die for you’ he explained again

Like I hadn’t heard him before, ears thrumming with adrenaline

Still I couldn’t claw back an answer - fingertips sore from poking at my dead heart

Waiting for a pulse, a rhythm I could cling onto

Instead I was met with the creak of my bones and the ache of my chest

The rest of me was still

‘Are you going to answer?’ he questioned

Like it was simple, something which could be summarised in six words or less

Yet the universe - filled with everything - could not formulate the terms needed

So instead I let my feet carry me

Into the ocean, past the bounds of my imagination

Far from the shores I’d been used to

And I waited for him to follow

But he never did