Did I Say That I Loathe You?

I find it so disconcerting that every few weeks he keeps crossing my mind, despite the brevity of our acquaintance. Perhaps it's the reminders: pictures uploaded by mutual friends that include the girl he was yearning for at the time we first talked, since her parents had forbidden her from talking to or seeing him. Or maybe it's the stories I hear now through the grapevine, the ones about girls my age from elitist families, stealing their fathers' vodka to give to him. Or maybe that e-mail in my inbox, overridden by piles of other virtual messages that I came across again a few days ago.

It was between talk of families, his Shia beliefs and humanism. He asked me what I was listening to, and I blurted out Damien Rice which wasn't entirely true but I didn't want to appear childish. It was the first name that came to mind since I had recently also studied Volcano in a Hermeneutics class at school. And he sang it to me the colder water. The blower's daughter. And I wasn't in love with him or anything, but in that moment he fixed everything. Just by singing to me, something he did for countless other girls, countless people, even made money out of it. But he was doing it for me then, the strum of his guitar, the hum of his 'd's and 'r's and it made me forget the nastiness of the words he had read out to me just moments ago, in that same voice. Words at the thought of which even now I can feel the ground slipping from beneath my feet. The words in the e-mail.

I know whatever he did was out of revenge. He told me the truth to get back at someone else. But if he hadn't decided to do it I could've been in the dark forever. And for what he did that night I will be indebted forever.

Did I say that I loathe you,
Did I say that I want to
Leave it all behind?


And then there's another memory associated with this song. A 3 a.m text message lullaby from 3 years ago.