Jaculiferous: having a spine resembling a row of darts
He has a back like that, muscular with a tiny row of knots protruding from the vertebrea along his spine. One day we’ll all just be big piles of bones. (I wonder if it will be sooner rather than later.)
Do you ever feel the need to scream at strangers on the street, I love you! because you’re afraid no one else will? We’re forced to abide by the pleasantries and formalities of modern socieltal life. Casual flirting, boys text you first, date one: dinner, date three: sex, year three: marriage, kids, fall out of love, divorce…
“I don’t think you can ‘fall out of love’ they way we define it today, Anna.”
Louisa and I conversed in hushed tones in the library, “People have so perfected their means of living that they forget what it’s like to be alive. It’s entirely about sex and fortune and celebrity, finding someone to share your life with takes the back seat to finding a girl to snog you tonight.”
I’m trying to remember what I thought love was when I was a child. I don’t think we should forget those little things; growing up means conforming and becoming boring and I wish I still believed in the love that happens in fairy tales.
“But L, We forget that love is ephemeral, you can’t break it into a science. I think all those moments, the ones where you get butterflies and your heart quickens and your palms sweat, shouldn’t those count?”
“For lust.”
“But I think those moments are the most precious, honest things we have. It’s before we come to realize what’s wrong with a person: he’s too loud, too clumsy, flirts too much with other girls. It’s this moment where fate steps in and makes this wonderful connection and in that second they can do no wrong. That can’t only be lust because your heart pounds so fast all the blood must surely be in your chest rather in in your nethers and, at least for me, I hardly ever can look anywhere but the boy’s eyes.
It doesn’t matter what he’s wearing, or how tall he his, or if he’s sweet to look at. If there are butterflies when our eyes connect I feel like I’m seeing a little bit of his soul. I love that, at least.”
“And then?”
I’m dejected, a deflated sign escapes my lips because society has me beat. “Nothing. There’s no bit of etiquette, no system that dictates a set of rules for what I can do. ‘You can’t be in love after just a moment,’ ‘He’ll look at someone else like that ten seconds later,’ ‘Get on with your life you can’t love someone you don’t know.’ But after that, I want to know.
What if everyone else is as sick of this loveless life as I am? What if we need a little magic?”
And what if those moments could be the line between life and death? What if, driven insane by this monotony and loveless, marriage -for-the-sake-of-convenience monogamy, people decided maybe they’d be better off just a pile of bones?
