Whirlpools

Campfire dancing. Bodies moving in undistinguishable patterns that seem to blend with the flames and color the night every type of beautiful. Your hair, the most beautiful shade of mud brown I’ve ever seen, creating whirlpools that seem to swallow me whole. We bare the tribal marks of the late greats before us and crouch to the ground like she wolfs, howling and singing and hi-yi-yahing, and I’m staring at you with big doe eyes because you are possibly the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen. You smile at me and turn your head back to the starry night sky, drenched with shooting stars, and I use all of them to wish for you.

I get my hopes up when you reach over to hold my hand, but that’s normal with us because we are friends and it means nothing. I tell you I love you and you say it back, almost as reflex, but you don’t realise that I’m pouring my soul out, and if you’d just glance over you’d see that my tears are illuminated by our fire. But you don’t look at me. You just lift your head, and gaze to somewhere beyond us, and tell me that you just want to get out of here. Need to get out of here, and it takes everything to keep me from shouting that I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. And I want to.

But I don’t. I just stand. Nod. Wait. For you to say anything else, because you are my earth and I am your moon. Keeping me grounded, and from getting lost in myself, and humanity and you make sure that I know I’m important to you because I give you light in your darker moments, and I don’t tell you that my real purpose in life is to be yours entirely. So when you say that you want the dancing to commence I eagerly get to my feet to join you in the twirling and flailing, and once again get swallowed whole in the whirlpools.