Life starts with the urge to be swallowed. Then follows the want to pulse, then the need to hurt, to kick to prove our existence. Around the seventh week we grow the most crucial parts of our eyes and by the thirty-ninth – we learn to scream. It’s been plenty of time since I first used my voice and I think my voice box is starting to rust, because I haven’t used it since. Not the way I should anyway.
“Hi.” The Jacobite Train rolled straight through my life.
Your eyes make me want to be swallowed again; dark like abysses. More stars twinkle in the right one than in the left. It’s hard to differentiate between “Hi.” (with the intention of making an acquaintance) and “Hi.” (with the intention of absolute devotion) when you look at irises like that. So void of colour and yet in the most striking of shades.
And then I see all the hypotheticals of us in other lives, right on the greyish whites of your eyes. The one where you are unconditionally mine and the ones where you aren’t. That’s when the itch spreads from my shoulders and down to my fingertips. I want to hug you. Tighter. Preferably forever.
Take your sorrows off and give them to me. I will hang them by the fireplace, as if they are a rain-soaked coat and listen. Talk to or ask me to do so. And I will. I will speak all the words I never was courageous enough to write about you.
Isn’t it comical, my own devastating God? The one who spends every eve spewing her ink-coloured guts on paper can’t tell the difference between lust and ardour.
And all this to say I love you, perhaps. For I don’t know how to sound out the words, I let them suffocate in my throat and pray that the you-shaped hole in my heart will be just a birth defect the pathologist will discover upon my death, and not the cause of this incessant lusting over the one I could never call my own.
Eva Axelle Moller is a writer, poet, and university student. Her work explores the intersections of memory, love, and the self, often blending lyrical intensity with narrative clarity. She has won national awards for creative writing. Beyond her academic and literary pursuits, she is building a career in storytelling and visual arts. She shares her poetry and projects at @evaaxellemoller_.