The day was not the best, especially in my head. I was thinking calmly about stepping off the side of the mountain in the rain, arms outstretched, embracing this life, this empty space one last time and making it look like an accident. My eyes were blurry with salt and I hadn’t eaten in days but my mind was clearer than air on a blue-sky morning in the Black Country.

I said,

no hard feelings bright, hard world but maybe, just maybe you are not for me. Maybe I’m stretched too thinly, pressed too deeply into you in a shape that I can’t keep without cramping and maybe just maybe your breath is too cold. Perhaps human nature is just too fickle to understand. And rainbows aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, so why hang around till the rain ends?

That was when I saw you. Eyes did meet, lightening did not flash…but I thought to myself, who wears a reindeer jersey and red shorts in May? And anyway you looked kind and the sun was peeping out a little, and the sky was still dark and it was still drizzling but everyone needs a little kindness. You have a smile that turns down at the corners and those gentle kind of eyes

those gentle kind of eyes.

We sat on a hill in the car looking at where the beach met the sea and the rain hit them both and I (quite desperately, quite selfishly) kissed you hard and said, drive into the sea with me, just once and it’s done. Instead you drove fast in the opposite direction to a blessed place of broken brick and stone and said ‘this used to be my childhood house’ and drove me further, on further, to a purple house safe up on the hillside and said,

 one day this will be home.

It wasn’t perfect. It isn’t now. I still have days when I want to exit the system quicker then you can say, “don’t you dare give up now”, and you still have days where you can’t even taste the sweetness in raw honey and neither one of us believes in pills. Days when I so want to kiss you but your mouth is sour and my thoughts are bitter and I’m angry…just  mad, just crazy with it all. But we are each others home sweet home, Love. The roof is screwed on too tight at times and the walls of our purple house can pinch a little but my God, they are always warm.

Yrsa Daley-Ward