Work Text:
I look across the room for you.
Countless times, countless days, countless moments. I’ve always looked for you.
Drawn to the sky in your eyes. Drawn to the shine of your dress. Drawn to the kindness of your presence.
Drawn to the familiar ease of our banter. Drawn to the heartfelt laughter. Drawn to the brightness of your mind.
I wrote and wrote of hollow intimacy, of an incomplete picture of comfort and happiness as I float around the world, eager to discover my purpose. Eager to understand places unfamiliar and yet eager to come home to write letters about it to you.
Funny…in every city, I find myself looking for you. Looking for the familiar blue of your eyes in strangers. Looking for your smile in different faces. Looking for your bright red hair in a crowd.
Your words kept me company. I blanketed your letters each night, much like the yellow sheets I have at home.
Always looking for you. Always drawn to you.
They lifted the veil and all I could see was your worried face. My trembling hands and feet would have run to you, placating your fears.
I’m here, Pen. I’m here with you.
I nod across the room and find my heart soar as you timidly smile, nodding in slow confidence as you walked towards me. I wonder if time stood still as I remember the night that you asked for a kiss. The night where everything changed.
Have I told you the moment when I realised the way my heart beats for you? Why in a crowded ballroom, it’s your yellow dress that I often easily find? How in moments of our childhood and adolescence, I realised that my favourite thing was making you laugh or smile?
I feel like a fool whenever I remember how I've been oblivious of my feelings for you. Of your feelings for me. I've gotten so used to how we always were that I never realised that I had to option to have you forever.
I look across the room for you— you who are now shining so beautifully in a bridal gown. Stunningly made only for me. And yet the ache in my heart war against the woman in front of me and the enigma that broke my heart all those years ago.
I see you and I see her. And yet you are one person. And yet you are both wearing the same dress, the same wedding ring, the same smile that lifts and breaks my heart at the same time.
I look across the room for you for I long for you. Always you. Like a moth drawn to a fire, I have always looked for you.
I see you cross the room for me. I know you’re walking towards me for my heart has been calling for you fervently all this time.
For the first time in my life, I see an unfamiliar spark in your eyes— so full of confidence, so full of fire. The girl who I knew as timid and shy has grown into a woman so bright, clever, and beautiful that I am afraid of the fire that will consume me.
And yet, I long for you. As you open your heart, looking, asking me to join you in this dance of freedom, I lock eyes with you, held out my hand, and lead you to the centre of room.
You who will always bring me back to myself. You who always saw the scars in my heart. You who knew me inside and out.
Could I give you up for the sake of protecting my heart? Of clinging to the hurt in the past? Could I keep faulting you for something that you made in your youth and naïveté? Of the circumstance of your pain and broken heart?
Could I let go of this hand who has faithfully loved me all these years? Who has accepted me just as I am even when I tricked myself in changing myself to fit in?
I’ve always longed for you. For the warm and clever person that you are. For the kind and bright person that you are.
But you are more than that. And I need to keep up. I want to keep up.
Because how could I live without your light?