My mouth was so laden with dryness that the flood of water that came with your kiss
felt like petty sprinkles over my cracked lips.
A weak baptism that left my mouth chalky
and ill with disdain and shallow salvation.
I knew then that you weren’t enough for me.
That the water you had to offer wouldn’t be
enough to moisten even the pockets of my lips.
It would disappear in a thin vapour before it would reach me.
Your eyes hadn’t seen The Light, nor had your tongue tasted life in its fullness.
You had yet to succumb to an authority that would break your knees in worship.

So I decided not to wait.
Not to wait for you.
Or anyone else that took my eyes off The Light.

I wrote this piece, and I thought of you,
fully aware that my mind ought not to torment itself.
Yet I relished in being able to recount these sinful but tasteful tales.

I prayed for a saviour, desperate to believe in an entity greater than I,
yet in the midst of this I also prayed for you, for your kind, I mean.
Two conflicting identities both hungry for my love and attention.
I toyed with you both as if I had a choice between you.
I looked at you, begging, pleading with hurt and malice in my eyes to walk with me to the light,
my first love.
And so when it all ended that night,
the night after lust came rushing to your groin and confused whining developed in my body,
did the words I said then, make any sense?
That night when our spirits in the form of our tongues intertwined,
did you expect patience from me?
You entered my body and got lost in me,
because you did not know me, my body wasn’t yours to know.
Yet you explored it with a hastiness that left me weak and satisfied but spiritually dead.
My Love, my first love, was no where to be found.
And it was then, whilst watching you sleep that I noticed your mouth,
cracked with dryness, how could you in all your dust laden lips possibly speak life into me?
In your unassuming position, I saw the brittleness in your bones.
They looked like ashes before my eyes, to be blown away with each one of your short breaths.
I noticed the twitching of your eyes, the subtle murmurs that escaped from the slight of your lips,
the paleness, the darkness and the end of it all.

And so in a moment of realisation, I decided not to wait for you.
Not to wait until you had completely deteriorated.
I couldn’t stand to see the darkness that was in you.
I also couldn’t watch you drag me down with you.
Perhaps it was an act of selfishness, but it was of complete necessity.
When you had awoken from your slumber, you watched me leave.
With tears in both our eyes, I looked into you and I loved you.
I forced our spirits apart, the twirling of our bodies were now seizing
and I felt your gaze burning into my cheek.
As I walked away,
your spirit tugged at me and surrounded me,
but I was to return to my first love.
Because I was not yours to have,
and while you tried to gather yourself, your baggage, and your dignity to follow me, I knew it would take years or never at all.
My patience had run thin and time had been unforgiving.
I fled as fast as I could, without looking back in the fear that I would turn into a pillar of salt –
salt that had lost all it’s taste.

For the sake of my destiny
and my sanity,
for my body
and my spirit,
for my religion
and my mother
and my grandmother
and my great great grandmother,
for the sake of my life
and its eternal being,
you were not enough,
and you never would be.

For this reason,
and this alone, I was unprepared to wait for you.
I left you with a swiftness as if my life depended on it, because it did.
You did.

Sherida is a London based Graphic Designer and lifestyle blogger. Amongst other things she a collector of books, magazines, and print samples due to her slightly obsessive zeal for printed typography and swiss design. When she’s not scrutinising someone’s type treatment, she writes short stories with wit and unadulterated truths. | Twitter + Blog + Port

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Image Source: Elsa Benitez by Regan Cameron for UK Vogue September 1997