First Published via HUB Magazine when I was Culture Editor.

Date Published: 12th February 2023.

Photography by Skye Collacott Williamson.

Dearest reader,

I went too far this time.

I lay crestfallen on the wooden ledge overlooking the moors, and the clock in my room continues ticking. The raindrops on the window drowned in my misery. I am terrified to look at myself in the mirror, scared to be greeted by the woman I had become. The memory of unravelling her braids lingers in my hands. Her beauty was remarkable.

I hadn’t seen Rosalina in a month, and I knew it would be easier if I never did. Anxiously pondering over my mistakes would not achieve anything.

My husband is the love of my life in every way that matters. Father of my children, friend and first love. Benedict taught me how to love and that I could be loved. He built me a house, layering the stones of memories and decorating it with his love for me. Nevertheless, Rosalina – dearest reader, I cannot resist – planted her seeds of ivy over the walls. They grew subtle at first. However, each year, the roots grew deeper into the stones until they began to crack and crumble under their force. Until I am left as nothing but encapsulated by her, covered in her ivy, covered in our clandestine love.

I silently crept out of my house. My blue coat kept out the rain as I galloped through the moors. I continued until I was far enough to barely see the house, the newfound solitude, allowing me to finally scream everything that had been building inside of me for twenty-five years. The moors served as freedom, allowing me to remain unapologetically me. I would never have her love to keep; the thought maimed me. Then, when I was gasping for air, smiling at the heavy feeling in my lungs, I heard another horse approach and race past me. A dash of purple awakens me, I spur my horse even faster to catch up to her. I couldn’t let her disappear again into the fog.

“Rosalina,” I shouted, desperate even as the wind covered my sound.

The fog blurred lines in my mind, making it difficult to navigate. My entire life, I realised, mirrored fog. Only when I see her face does everything come into focus, into colour.

I had doubts about whether she had ever seen or heard me, but I knew I could not stop my shouting. Perhaps, dearest reader, it was by my distraction or despair to see my love leave me again. But as we approached the forest, I missed a low-hanging branch and came crashing, hard, to the ground in a breathless pile of a broken heart.

It must have been the loud snap that caught Rosalina’s attention.

It maimed me to love her, but is that not what love is? To be consumed by emotion, not to see reason? If love was rational, I did not want it, my dear reader. I’d rather bleed from the thorns of love than the curse of my own mind plaguing me forevermore in the question of whether she had been my great love.

She reached out her hand. Still breathless from the fall, I could not help hesitating and being enticed by the beauty in front of me. She had silk lavender gloves, a fact I noticed as I accepted her hand. Yet, perhaps it was my rampant imagination, but I could still feel the warmth of her skin against mine. This single thought cursed me speechless. Rain dripped from her eyelashes and chin, refocusing my attention on her cherry lips, slightly shivering from the cold rain. The look in her eye was not one of the stolen stares we frequently shared across crowded rooms, but vulnerability.

“I wish not to talk”, she retreated her hand from mine and turned her back on me.

This must be the cruellest of fates, not to talk to the person you desire most intimately in this world. To burn for someone and not reveal your friendship’s true nature. I could not hold the truth back anymore, nor did I desire to.

“I thought it was my title, my duty, my faith, I cannot live without.” I stepped towards her, shouting against the beating rain, “But it is you, whom I cannot and will not sacrifice.” Although her back remained turned against me, her head angled as if to listen to my pleas. “You maim me a million little times until I cannot breathe, and yet I still burn for you. You above all others. I am yours and always will be, Rosalina. I would ruin myself, but I shall not bear witness to my dearest children receiving the same fate…”

“I will not make do under any false pretences”, she interrupted me. The wind blew down her purple hood to unleash her wild curls. She held her hand over her heart with the other on top to comfort her as she breathlessly said, “your faithless love is a scar that opens eternally”.

I reached out to her, but I stopped myself, “You are like the rose bushes I pass by every morning. Your beauty draws me in, but no matter how hard I try to avoid their thorns, I pull away maimed.”

She shook her head. It isn’t enough. Anger bottled up so long inside of me. I am drenched head to toe in the water. I scream to the sky and curse it for granted, my love for her and yet taking away my ability to be with her.

“Look at this godforsaken mess you made me; I am bleeding my love for you.” I shouted at her. She appeared stunned at first until she stepped toward me, closing the space between us then placed her hand on my cheek.

“I have nothing else to say, except I love you. I have spent 10 years denying this damning fate.” She stroked my cheek with her thumb, “Marianne, I don’t want to do it anymore”. I pulled her closer to me. I am intoxicated by the smell of lavender and cinnamon. I stared into her beautiful eyes.

“You have bewitched my mind for ten years, I promise till I’m lying on my deathbed to truly, completely love you and spend the rest of my life making up for lost time”. She kissed me gently at first, but as the rain intensified, so does the kiss.