Inspiration: “For Emma” and “Flume” by Bon Iver

This story comes in two parts.

Before:

Her favorite song was playing but she looked at him and everything felt quieter. She could taste the air around his lips and felt a pang in her chest.

One of her tears dripped into her mouth and melted with the lyrics she sang along to. He looked at her and smiled, laughed gently, put a finger to her cheek and wiped away another drop.

“Running home, running home, running home, running home…”

It was then when her heart bloomed sadly with the realization of how much she wanted him.

She rolled the idea of telling him around on her tongue. The love tasted soft, like sea-foam green.

She knew that finally letting herself feel it wasn’t to say that she could have him, but that he moved her in a way only a waltz could understand, overpoweringly, that all other men were faceless in his wake.

After:

They laid together, shaking off their worries with quivering muscles and flickering like neon signs in the dark.

They moved, young and golden, with breath like the undersides of clouds’ bellies. It’s a new kind of silence when the air is delicate and two people struggle to become one body.

She turned to lie on her side for a minute, waiting for a baptism in a sea of shivers and sighs. As he traced her jaw line, she forgave her features that were sharp enough for an architect’s pencil. As he traced her silhouetted waist, she forgave her extra skin that was soft enough for creases and wrinkles.

“Don’t let go,” she murmured. “Nothing works without you.”

He took her and folded her more tightly into his arms, whispering warmly, tenderly, his voice vibrating with stanzas of sonnets and maroon.

—By Callie A., 20, Madrid