A Feather in the Mouth

Léa said my name today. Once. Once was enough. She didn’t mean to. Maybe it slipped. Maybe it was an accident, like a breath she forgot to hold back. But it was there.

Verlaín.

Not the way I say it... Dragged and slow, like honey breaking apart. No. She said it like it was something she was done with. But still.... mine.

---

It was raining, and the hallway lights flickered like bad memory. She stood by the window, her fingers tracing the fog on the glass. As if erasing something. I didn’t plan it. I wasn’t going to speak. But I dropped my notebook ..... on purpose, of course. It landed open, pages flaring like a wounded bird. She turned.

“You dropped something, Verlaín.”

That was all. But my name on her tongue? It didn’t sound like love. It sounded like a test. Like she was checking if it tasted like blood. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I was too busy trying not to let my body collapse around the word.

---

Later that night, I wrote it down. "You dropped something, Verlaín." Over and over.

You dropped something, Verlaín.

You dropped something, Verlaín.

You dropped something—

Until the page looked like it was weeping.

---

But it’s what came after that scared me. Because the more I wrote her voice, the more I began to answer. I imagined myself standing there again. This time, not silent.

“What if I dropped something on purpose just to hear you say my name?”

And then she would smirk.

Not a smile. A crack.

“What if I knew that?” she’d whisper. “What if I’ve known all along how much you want to be ruined by me?”

I wrote it like it happened. I convinced myself it did. Because memory is soft clay when you're starving.

---

I saw her again, two days later. Same hallway. No rain this time, just that heat that makes everything feel sticky and unreal. She looked at me for a second too long. That second was my religion.

I wanted to ask her:

“Did you write that sentence in my notebook?” “Do you know you live in my ribs now, curled up like a scream I haven’t let out yet?”

But I didn’t. Because she was already walking away.

---

I followed her...... not out loud, not physically. I followed her in my mind. I imagined walking beside her, imagined our fingers brushing like strangers who pretend it didn’t happen.

I imagined her asking:

“Why do you keep orbiting me like that?”

And me replying:

"Because I think you might be the only thing I can’t consume.”

And her saying:

“Then stop trying.”

But I don’t know how to stop. I want her like fire wants air. Not to hold. To burn through.

---

That night, I dreamed of her mouth... not kissing, not speaking. Just opening. A feather floated out. And I caught it. And it melted in my palm. And I cried. Because I realized I would never get to keep any part of her. Not even that.

---

The next morning, there was a note under my door. Tiny. Folded. Torn at the edges. My hands shook like childhood. It wasn’t signed.

Just one sentence:

“You confuse hunger with love. One of them kills slower.”

I don’t know if it was her. But who else knows the language of my starvation?

---

Her name is Léa. And mine is Verlaín. And somewhere between us there’s a silence thick enough to drown in.

But I’ll keep walking that hallway. Keep dropping my notebooks. Keep writing her into rooms she’s never entered. Because now I’ve heard her voice say my name. And I won’t forget the way it bruised me.

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