Member-only story
Tall Dark Stranger
I see you
On the other side of the party
This revelry of friends between closeted lockdowns
A bohemian consortium of lost souls and cold hearts
Tall, dark and handsome
You wear a repressed smile as though pained
What burnt you, burns you still
We spend the dawn hours of the moonlit garden party,
between idle chit-chats and cannabis fuelled debates
We scarcely speak
A few words, nothing more
We are listeners and so read far more from what’s not said
I am curious
You are repulsed
Yet an insurmountable energy remains
And so, a chain reaction must follow
I feel your heavy disdain
And you are wrong
I caught it on your first glance
We share the same pain
What was never given when it was needed most
The emptiness in your heart which you seek so hard to fill
We give it freely in the hope that it may someday return
I am lured by the pain that defines me in masochistic self-sabotage
You retreat from it in chivalrous self-denial
Neither of us are wrong
We will oscillate between the two notions throughout our lives
The night ends and we drift off,
like shadows of the day that eventually recede into the darkness
Our paths may cross again
Or they may not
I wish you well, Atreyu!
