How Long Is A Piece Of String?

Down the staircase we made our escape.

Through the basement window the moonlight was dim.

And I asked him

How long will you love me?

With his fingers filling the hollow of my back

and his lips pressed to my neck

he said

Heck, how long is a piece of string?

I laid my head to rest

on his bare chest and started to think.

Was it as long as his straw-coloured eyelashes,

trembling skittishly with every blink?

Or as long as the distance travelled by the warm breath

I drew from his lungs to mine?

Maybe it was as long as that old rope he began to unwind -

that old rope he caressed as his toungue danced on mine -

that old rope he strung up over a beam in the ceiling?

In his dusty basement I felt so at home

as I told him I do not know - how long is a piece of string?

He smiled, pulled me close, shut his eyes, and deeply sighed.

And as we loved our last

he so softly replied

Long enough to hang us both.

---

originallly written 18th January 2017

Writer's notes: If I was in a movie I would be the awkward highschool girl who retreats from society, her family, and everyone she knows because she's met a boy, and he's amazing, and he completely understands her like no one ever has or ever will. He has a really shitty life and wants to end it all and take his new girlfriend with him so they can be together forever, alone. She hesitates at first, but then she agrees because her life is equally shitty and no one would really miss her anyway. In a murder-suicide he hangs them both in the basement of his single father's house - it's a while before anyone even finds them.

But, I'm not in a movie and I suspect that I am incapable of love... so I guess I live.