The Word Thief, or The Love of My Life

It's May, it's exam time, French grammar is not my friend, and I'm suffering from an excruciating writer's block. Now that my troughs and peaks of emotion have evened out into a nice sort of wave, my writing seems to have followed suit. Everything is- nice. Especially with, about and because of you.

I'm not saying you don't sweep me off my feet (in both senses, to my great amusement), or that something inside me doesn't still give a little leap even at the sight of your name. That would be lying in the extreme. It's just that I've gone all mellow. Soppy and sighing and squishy inside. And it's all your fault, I'm afraid. Time spent with you can feel like the climax of a film, those few seconds where the hero pulls the wide-eyed girl close and holds her in a passionate embrace, and it's just them, those two beautiful fragile wonderful people against the rest of a hostile world- but as soon as I'm alone with flushed cheeks and a fountain pen the paper or the glowing screen in front of me remains obstinately blank. Emotions gush inside, a whirlwind, a torrent of memories and chemical reactions, a test tube frothing over in its desperation to change form, to solidify. But it's like trying to describe to someone a colour that only you can see, which doesn't yet have a name. A little bit lighter than red, you can say, struggling, gesticulating, but darker than pink. Not fuchsia. Not magenta. Like your jumper, only not... Specificities? Impossible.

It was sometime last month, I think, when I dearly wanted to write about us. Not in a creepy I-write-about-everything-we-do-and-post-it-for-the-public-to-see type way. Just to express, to create, to portray a few hours I had found truly magical, encompass them firmly in words so that they could never be lost and dissipate like smoke. But no words came. My head was just full of the images. The stream of golden light flowing through the gap in the curtains; the individual dust motes floating into visibility, glittering like embers. Everything so quiet, so still, the voices outside strangely muted. A moment in slow-motion. You beside me, backlit, on the bed; our bodies touch all the way down one side. Your lips slightly parted, your light eyes close enough for me to see myself reflected there. Nothing so perfect, so private, could possibly be carved and sanded into the shape of a poem, could ever be imitated adequately in fiction.

Well, they do say a picture is worth a thousand words. And these are my words, this is my tribute to the unforgettable pictures you have given me in return for my scansion and my rhyme.

I think it is a fair enough trade, my word thief.