I should be writing on the back of an elephant right now, scratching words across its leathered wrinkles with my dusty, dirt encrusted fingernails, or etching my feelings into the underside of your forearm with an unfolded paperclip. I should be fingering the button of a spray can at midnight or dragging my toes across the wet sand as the sun sets or rises beyond the waves.
I should be decorating an origami fortune teller with each letter of your name or sketching the gentle curve of your back on the footpath with a child's forgotten chalk.
I should be singing for you, your favourite song, on the Internet so your friends can see.
And we should be dancing at three o'clock in the morning, wildly, laughing in your room and on your bed and on the floor again.
I want to do these things, and I know you want it, too. But today is it enough that I hold your hand and squeeze your fingers and not let go until one or both of us admits to the cramp?
Please know that it is not weakness that holds me back; it's fear, the very worst kind of fear. That blood on your arm is real, it is darker than you could ever imagine and it will drip, the tide will eventually come in. Your friends will laugh and the songs will end. And you will know me then.
