WhAT dO yOu SeE?

“Babe?”

She rolls over and faces him after her question.

“Yeah?”

He rolls over onto his side and faces her after he answers her question.

“What do you see when you look at me?”

He grins at her. She smiles back. They exchange blinks. Both of them had been waiting all week to create a moment like this.

“You being serious right now?”

She bats her eyes. Her silence was his answer. She reaches over and rubs his exposed shoulder blade to further motivate him.

“Please!”

The innocent command contained more inertia than he could comprehend. It made him chuckle on the inside, and he had no intention of not entertaining the value that this memory in the making held for the both of them. If pulled off in the perfection he knew he could deliver, he had no doubt that it would play out in his favor if he handled her like the fresh cut flower that she was.

“Okay…,”

he pauses,

“ready?”

She nods. He continues.

…

"Every time I look at you,
it's like I'm looking at
you for the second time,
after weeks have passed by,
me missing the moment
I laid eyes on you for 
the first time.

It doesn't matter what color
your eyes are or were,
whether they be blue like
a cloudless sky at seven a.m.,
brown like warm chocolate 
pudding simmering on a stovetop, 
or green like the first blades of 
grass popping up in our yard
after a long, cold winter,
I would stare at them,
like I'm doing now,
and continuously get lost 
and look forward to being 
carried away to the distant 
nebulas that they contain.

Every night I go to sleep
or watch you fall asleep
and your eyes shut for the night,
as do mine,
I cannot wait to wake up 
and see you staring back 
at me, you unwrapping my
glances with yours until you
fall back asleep or pull 
yourself closer to me."

...

He takes a breath. She looks at him as though she is unsatisfyingly satisfied. He continues to pause. She edges him on with her next soft command.

“Don’t stop! Please!”

He jokingly sighs.

“Fine!”

…

"When I'm with you,
there's nowhere else I want to be,
and when I'm not with you,
there's only one place I want to be.

I look forward to seeing your smile,
to hearing your laugh,
to putting up with your sarcasm, 
eating lunches with you,
hearing about your day,
you being snippy with me,
being in a room filled with people,
making eye contact with you
from across the room
and watching you slowly smile
and roll your eyes with whoever
you are having a conversation with,
unbeknownst to them,
because you are ready to be 
released from their presence so
you can walk over and engage me.

We freeze time when we want to,
speed it up when we demand,
and throw it away every time
we wrap ourselves
around one another.

I'm addicted to you,
for everything that makes you, you,
and I will do anything to have you.
I would never leave a single crumb 
of you on the plate of any meal that 
I could feast on because you deserve 
to be savored entirely, never forgotten."

...

Even though his last poetic confession was absolute fire, he could tell it was not enough to quench her thirst. It was like he had started something that was not going to end and the only person to blame was her. Meaningful lines from the heart can hit certain girls’ or guys’ hearts with specific resonance, and he knew she was going to do her best to hide her catered intrigue behind her vulnerable, semi-seductive stare.

“More? Really?”

He follows his question with a shrug. All she does is smile and nonchalantly nod her head up and down.

“Really?”

He asks his question again in hopes she would give up and relent, but she was not. She was living out her pre-planned fantasy the way she wanted to.

“Fine! Last one, so enjoy!”

…

"I want to listen to you when
no one else is listening.
I want to look at you when
no one else is looking.
You're the first thing I want to
taste every morning and
the last thing I want to touch
before I drift away at night's end.
You are what keeps me going
when I feel like giving up and,
when I need to slow down and
take a breath, your hand is the
one that calms me into stillness.

I look forward to getting lost in
you with every passing day while
finding pieces of myself that I have
lost along the way, you holding
my hand and making sure I'm not
alone with each step I take because
you, too, are doing the same thing
as me, making this journey a once
in a lifetime type of occurrence.

I wish the only thing we had to do
all day, every day, was strip ourselves 
of everything that made us, us, 
and attach our bare bodies to one
another and exchange the heat
from within and only separate from
one another when we needed to 
breathe, if then, and, hopefully,
through this, we could find the place
that made home truly feel like home."

…

After he finishes his last line, he sits in silence and looks at her. She stares back at him. They both wear hesitant grins on their faces. Her lack of verbal response somewhat unnerves him. He does not know what is going through her mind but he wants to know.

“Was that not good enough?”

She waits before answering his question. She continues to wear her smile and chuckles. Three drops of joy starts to fill her eyes. She already knows why she loves him so much and this only solidifies that known fact.

“Babe…,”

she nestles her face underneath his chin. He brushes her hair with his tired fingers,

“…it was perfect!”

She takes in a sweet inhalation of the way he smells in the morning.

“It was everything a girl could have asked for.”

He smiles even though she could not see it considering the way she was positioned. He does not doubt himself but was relieved to know that what he said resonated with her and made her feel the way it did. Then, the same question she had asked him popped into his head.

“Well, since I told you what I see in you,”

he takes a breath,

“what do you see in me?”

She knew he was going to ask her that, and she was still unprepared to answer him directly. She knew that he knew that she did not like being put on the spot. Her feisty nature began to take over, and she realizes whatever response she is about to deliver was the one that he was trying to bring out.

“Babe… that’s not fair!”

She raises her face to meet his. He knew she was going to respond like this.

“Why’s that?”

Instead of pouting, he plays her game like she was playing his.

“Because… you know I’m not a wordsmith like you.”

He scoffs.

“You know I don’t care about that. How shallow do you think I am? I like what you have to say.”

He smiles. She smiles back but still shies away. She realizes she was going to have to take control of the situation. She quickly rolls over on top of him and holds onto him like a shipwrecked survivor holding onto the nearest flotation device. He is taken off guard.

“What is it?”

She already had her answer brewing in her mind and did not mind handling the situation as she saw fit. When a woman knows what she wants, she goes for it.

“Just hold me for a minute and I’ll show you what I see.”

He gives her a look of ‘what the hell is happening here‘. She gives him back a look of ‘yeah, your world is about to get rocked, astronaut‘.

“You talk with words, as do most men…,”

she rubs her thumb over his lips and continues,

“…but I’m going talk with my actions!”

They share a heartfelt chuckle. His heart beat begins to accelerate.

“You’ll see what I’m talking about soon enough! I promise!”

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Personal Playlist Jam – Enjoy!

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To all my readers and friends,

Over the past eighty-two blog posts that I have shared during my two year blogging tenure, I have thoroughly enjoyed sporadically inserting and sharing my fictional style and being able to aid us in escaping into random parallels far from the one we currently have to live inside of from day to day. The creative waters run deep with me and please do not think for a single second that I have not appreciated you taking the time to disappear into those created realms with me.

When the day and time comes, I have crafted other fictional worlds, in novel and novella form, with plot twists and characters that will be able to stick around longer than with a simple blog post. My unpublished books range from six hundred pages to over fourteen hundred pages, genres spanning from southern fiction to all brands of mainstream literary fiction .

With that being said, for the foreseeable future, I am no longer going to be able to post any future works of fiction to vernonwrites.com

I do not say that with a heavy heart because I have enjoyed, with every fiber of my being, creating and sharing short works of fiction with all of you and making them enjoyable, entertaining, and full of life and detail. I do say this, though, because I want to shift my focus over to blogging more real life, nonfictional essays along with different styles of poetry, as well as vocalizing those themes on my podcast channel (search ‘vernontalks’ on specific platforms).

Added to this is the fact that I am deriving a lot of enjoyment from writing, directing, producing, and editing my short films and posting them to my YouTube channel – 3 Castl3s Film – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj-Tb_yyFpdNG2VvCMJnAvg

A sequel to my first short film Upside Down is on the way, as we speak, and is titled Inside Out.

I hope you have enjoyed reading some of my short fiction stories, and I want you to know that I have savored writing each and every one for all of you. I have compiled all my previously blogged short fiction stories into an eight hundred and fifty page book titled Stories from the Void, and I hope to publish it one day in the future and dedicate the inside sleeve to all of you. I have a dedicated ‘FICTION’ tab on the homepage of my website if you’d like to visit and explore each one of them in their original form : http://www.vernonwrites.com

I hope you look forward to my future real life nonfiction and poetry themed blogs, as well as my short films and podcasts. I look forward to sharing my future projects with you as us adventurers forge into the unknown together. All the fictional novels that currently rest on my desktop (fourteen to be exact) will hopefully get published one day and possibly some of them will be turned into screenplays in time, and we will have more plot than you can possibly imagine to dive into, dissect, and pick apart layer by layer.

Always, thank you for your time, support, understanding, patience, and kind words when it comes to my specific brand of art. It means the world to me and has pushed me into becoming the writer I currently am and will continue to be.

For now, it’s back to the editing board because I have a short film trailer and sequel coming your way in the weeks to come! I hope you are as excited as I am!

Until then – with lots of love, as always,

Vernon

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