There was no denying it. The moment his heart and his mind collided and uniformly made the connection, his body could not possibly dare to contain the thought. It would feel akin to the pressure of the sun inside him, no doubt the heat, and the volatility of every colliding hydrogen atom at the sun’s core was but a shadow of the power he felt bursting from within him. 

“I love you, Jeremy.” He spoke the words simply, quietly, almost a whisper on the summer breeze. Even as soft as the words were on his tongue, they bored down upon the atmosphere like gravity, pulling towards his lips. Like the bass rumble of a nuclear bomb, and with similar searing heat, his heart thudded in his chest. 

Jeremy just looked at him, stunned. Inside him, it was like a violin string, taught and strong as steel, had been plucked and vibrated from the crown of his head to the tip of his spine. 

And like that, in the sticky, hot summer afternoon, in a room full of people at their wit’s end, they came together. Jeremy’s lips were cool, soft and supple, but held an urgency as they acknowledged the awakening in him. He had never contemplated love between him and another man, and had never fully understood why he could never comfortably be apart from Andrew for more than a few days. The gravity that held him there next to his friend had a name, love. More than a name, it had with it the missing information that completed his longing. The passion in their kiss was like a solar flare, popping and burning, connecting them for the first time. 

For both men, it was a reawakening. Andrew finally understood how he had been able to give up his life for Jeremy’s, and Jeremy understood finally why he could never allow Andrew’s life to be taken. It was selfish, for sure, but he understood that, were the situation reversed, the same result would have ensued. All it took was that four letter word, love. 

It is said that love is like fresh air. Whoever said it was wrong, very wrong indeed. Love was more than fresh air. It was the crushing wind that could topple trees in it’s wake, and still so gentle and constant that it could carry a butterfly across an ocean unscathed.

And then I woke up, weeping for more.

Barcodes and Their Brevity

It’s funny how no one really looks at barcodes. How do you know that this product has the correct barcode? How do you know this barcode isn’t trying to convey some desperate message that could change your life? It’s a foreign language almost, with very few fluent speakers. When I was in school I was very interested in writing a story based on the idea of a barcode as the driving force behind the plot, but despite my professor’s urging that I complete the story, my confidence deflated before I could continue.

I guess it’s because even I’m a romantic at heart, I tell myself beginning projects as a means of conveying my affections is silly and base. Then again, Dante wrote a whole trilogy that’s been translated into so many languages by so many people over a woman. In a nutshell, here is what I mean to say, in so many words, in so many parables, and with so many false characters and fantastical situations. If you find this interesting, reply with your own barcodes. Take a look at a QR code generator, such as this one, to make your own message and post it.