Cathal Gunning

February 14- Present

(for Orlaith, forever)

“She sees the things that you don’t see,

She breathes the air that you don’t breathe,

She bleeds the blood that you don’t bleed,

She looks to me like she loves me”

• Gustav Elijah Åhr, “Worlds Away”

3:40 a.m.

And I just love you, so much, fuck I almost fell over, walking on uneven cobblestones too late at night to be walking home alone and too early to call it a night already, and not on my own but not with you except in my heart where I always have you and always will, and in a city I know but we both know you'll still worry, where the stones are not black but a dark blue, wet with the rain of a few hours ago or right now maybe: I don’t know, it could be raining, fucking who knows, under the perma-lit dead of streetlight post-midnight in the small city where the streets are more slippy (Slippier? That’s a word) after drinking and dancing whilst breaking in the Docs you love me in and I'm catching myself and back to talking into my screen just to tell you—again, I know, because I’ll never stop telling you as long as I live—

7:40 p.m.

I love you, so much, more and more every day that we’re apart except in our hearts, and I always will as long as I live, and in the draughty hallway of an Air B+B a world away from you, the German guy in the next room sticks his head and frosted tips out and half-smiles, the knowing, clueless smile of an eighteen year old who’s already done with love unlike the Grown Ups© surrounding him until next week and I’m smiling back but at you rather than him and worrying about how I look to you but not really because we both know no one else has ever felt this and we wish everyone got the chance to; the joy, the fucking joy of it all, and the thought of forever together, the only certainty I’ll ever have or need, and—

3:40 a.m. / 7:40 p.m.

This is just to say nothing but something as simple and ephemeral and essential and ethereal and innate and unending and crazy and accurate as I love you and only you and all of you more than words can say forever and always more everyday till death my heart.