What they are is unspoken, but it’s painted there, in the spaces between their words.
He doesn’t know how twins act but he wonders sometimes if it is like this – if all twins are born with such an integral need to slot themselves against each other, like puzzle pieces, like lips clamped tight.
(Like lips, pressed in a kiss.)
He wonders what happens, when other twins leave one another, depart for whatever reason. If there is always such an emptiness, a bone-deep ache, like some vital organ has walked away. It’s a need he didn’t realize until she returned, drew back the curtain. Until he heard her voice, like songbirds, like the sun, like a dozen lovely things.
What they are is unspoken and he does not change this – he understands, in his way, that there is a certain wrongness at how he wants her – needs her – and that he cannot acknowledge it, that acknowledging it means drawing back another curtain, one he is not ready to touch.
(Someday, perhaps, they – he – will be driven and be forced to confront it, the thing sitting shamelessly in his heart, but not today, he tells himself, not today.)
“Promise,” he tells her, warmth radiating across his papery skin from where her lips meet.
I need you, she says, ghosting upon things he thinks but does not say.
(He will reply it, later, when she is gone again: I need you, I need you. He will replay the lips on his shoulder.)
“Adaline,” he breathes, and in the breaths are the confession: I need you, too.
contagion
be careful making wishes in the dark
(god they're such fucking saps)