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Apartment #207

A wallet opens

Crickets chirp

Ramen again

by Hania Syed http://www.teawithsocrates.com/

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by Steph Comfort (photographer) Models: Jess Longmuir & Calum Johnston MUA & Stylist: Anika Nawar 

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by Natalie Candlish http://www.nataliecandlish.com/

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Let Me Tell You

submitted anonymously

I rest, curled up in the foetal position, my knees digging into your ribs but only to an extent that you are subconsciously aware that they are there, my left arm outstretched trying to reach past this gap that my legs has caused between your torso and mine, my right hidden somewhere underneath our bodies, twisted and slightly uncomfortable, but lost from the possibility of retrieval. You are completely out like a light - off with the flick of a switch. Your heavy breathing slowly transforming into a low, quiet snore as your head lays just inches from mine under the nape of my neck, my nose tickled by your loose curls as I breathe silently in and out.

I am persistently aware of our presence together. Yet the relaxation that comes from it almost quietens any thoughts erupting from this awareness, until I’m no longer in your company and have a moment to myself to think about how I feel when I am with you.

Let me tell you, because I haven’t. 

I feel at ease. I feel safe. Protected. Free. I feel like you could kiss me at any moment and that’s so nice, my friend. Your hands on my lower thigh are perfect there. Warm, a little bit cheeky at times (oi! Not in public!), but comforting. But most importantly, any worries about myself, about image, about these stupid things, it disappears with your touch. It disappears when you look up over your rim of your glasses at 10:38pm as we sit at the university library studying away.

And whilst I love and adore spending time with you, I like the feeling of independence that you have given and continue to give me. I have become independent from myself and from stupid, consuming thoughts of self worth. In seeing that someone else can take care of me, I long to take care of myself and to take care of them. I like that one moment we can be yin and yang on the couch and the next you’re off to work and I’m off to write. That I can escape this mess of a town that I find myself lost in and head home to my mum and grandmother for some girl talk and fridge raiding, and you can catch up with friends, read your newest Le Carré novel or spend time with family of your own. 

I have never been with anyone before in the way that I am with you and it honestly is scary and perfectly comforting at every moment. So that, my friend, is why I am persistently aware of our presence together at the hours of the night as we lay side by side whilst you peacefully drift from dream to dream, talking in your sleep. I’m naturally a very head-heavy soul, thought fuels thought which fuels the written word and I just get lost in it all.

So we’re about to embark on this crazy beautiful adventure abroad. And I am glad that there are parts that we can share together and parts from which we can grow on our own. And when people ask me (because they do) how we’re going to do this, I say “I don’t know. But it’s good now, so if it keeps being good, then I’m not too phased.” You see, I am so introverted at times and other people’s projections of what I should be doing frighten me if I am to dwell on them. So I don’t. 

But fuck… that head of yours. It’s marvellous. I try not to think about it but you insist on sending me selfies or throwing it into my peripheral vision as you walk back into the room after a shower. I’ve always kinda liked it. You came into my life just as I was about to leave it and embark on one entirely new and I would say (jokingly, at first, but in reality it was a hidden truth) “that boy, I’d date him. He’s a friggin sweetheart.” You’re plenty cute. You’re ten cutes. So many cutes. Infinity cutes. Infinity drop dead handsomes. 

Your head was there occasionally on my computer screen as I travelled across countries and continents, popping up on social media. We talked maybe twice in that time, mostly about that Privet Drive profile picture of yours and how I remain peeved at the fact I still have never seen the ingenious one of me passed out on the threshold after Hagrid dropped me off from a big night out. I came home from my travels months later, and your head was there in my peripheral and head-on probably 4 days a week as I worked across the room from you, sometimes gyrating my hips to Bruno Mars trying to catch your eye and make you laugh as you taught the ageing population of the area how to irritate their families via modern technology.  Those 4 days a week were pretty nice. Seeing that smile was pretty magic. It always stopped me in my tracks. And now it still does. But now, I get the honour of having it all to myself. I get the honour to be the only one to witness it at times. I get to see you when no one else does. I get to watch you sleep. I get to be a creep. Did you feel a tickling itch on your nose the other night? That was that blanket you hate that I used the corner of to watch you squirm in dormant confusion. You’re welcome. This is me being completely fucking honest. And my goodness it is liberating. I am often scared to do this. But I feel good enough with you to be honest now. Fears, worries, self doubts kinda went away after a while. I let down my guard after months. 

So thanks for sticking with me through that time. You had to like me a fair whack to had done that. And let’s just say it paid off, because now I like you a fair whack back. Now I can go back to sleep (if your drowsy snores quieten down to a deep purr any time soon). You’re not a cat. Meow mix meow mix I will not deliver. 

Okay, shush now.No, really.

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by Jeanine Stewart http://wonderingsandwanderings.com/

Three little words

I don’t remember how it happened – the shift. I had said the words before but they’d felt awkward leaving my mouth. Spoken with a tongue tied and marbles in my cheeks and eyes averted as if I was telling him some deep, dark, shameful secret. The words were wrapped in a thin layer of shyness because, you see, I had not said them to a man, in that way, for a long time. They were new to me, unfamiliar, and I needed to get to know them again before inviting them in, let alone saying them out loud. Words like that should be sitting at the edge of one’s mouth, ready to leap, to burst forth from a heart beating so hard that it pushes them over the edge.

However, in my case, not only were they timid, they were triple-coated in an ultra-thick anti-scratch protective layer. It was I love you with a disclaimer – if I say this to you, do you promise to hold these three precious words in the cup of your hand like fragile little eggs?

You see, my love was chained to fear. The what if hung heavily. The what if whispered to me in the middle of the night… What if he hurts you? Or worse, what if, once he gets to know you, he stops loving you? It is this odious what if that kept me from opening up entirely to him, that kept my heart ajar and poised to clam up at the slightest hint of danger.  Because the thing is, once you open up, fully and completely, you become vulnerable. And it appears I still had some shit to sort out in that department before I could even begin to truly love again. It’s as if my emotional baggage had been stuck at security and scanned for restricted restrictive items: fear, doubt, mistrust. All were present in much larger quantities than allowed. I was way over the weight limit and I’d have to check these items if I were to carry on with this relationship.

And so. I finally did.

It happened somewhere on the corner of Beak and Lexington in London – the shift. The what if suddenly disappeared and was replaced with a knowing YES. And now, of course, I can hardly stop myself from saying the words. They bubble up from somewhere deep inside me and expand in my chest and if I don’t let them out, I feel I might burst.

And I’ve discovered that this letting go is far more rewarding than locking love up and hording it on the off chance that someone might hurt you. Because when it is set free, it grows, it grows.

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by Nick McKinlay http://nickmckinlayphotos.format.com/ 

Living in Aarhus, Denmark was pretty darn special. So burnt orange in the winter, crisp and dark. But it was the beginnings of Spring which brought amazing greenery. 

The first photo was taken at Risskov, a forest area, which at the time was spring with this beautiful flowering garlic. Oh man, it smelt real good in there.  The second was taken in Bazar Vest in Brabrand, a middle eastern shopping district. It was out of place in a quite homogeneous Danish culture, but we were all the better for its greenliness and laughs.

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Lust

by Kristy Lee Whitehead

I know it can’t be lust,

lust is when you only crave their body.

I crave your mind and your soul,

every inch of your thoughts tangled with mine.

I want to lay in the sheets after the heat,

and think about nothing but our hands.

forever intertwined…

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Young Love. Nothing More, Nothing Less.

by Ruth Hodge www.ruth-ellen.com

There's a young couple sitting outside at a small little table. Their knees are so close to touching, and you can tell as they toy awkwardly with their words and their hands fiddle solitarily in their laps that they're on a date. She leans in to listen as he starts to talk about something that he is passionate about and then backs away, head down, eyes curtained by a rogue curl that has been swept away countless times throughout the rendezvous. She's nervous and that's shown in her quietness. He's nervous and that's shown in his misplaced vivacity.

I'm sitting at the window inside like LB Jefferies, watching on, amusing myself with the little narrative that my brain has pieced together from seeing them to and fro between complete ease and comfortability to the strongest case of nerves. When I sat down at this café I had nothing particularly on my mind that I wanted to write about. But behind my screen they sat, and the energy between them sparked my interest. Call me a voyeur. Call me a dominos family pizza deal and have it delivered to my house.

I've always thought the phrase "young love" was to do with the age of the respective individuals. I see younger kids flirt and toy with the idea between each other - this feeling unable to be quashed by older, mature and seasoned thought (or overthought). But I'm coming to learn that regardless of age, young love is the stage in a relationship. It's the love that is young. And it's pretty cute. There's a youthful vivacity to it, a real urgency and then all at the same time it is slow, unsure, respectful. You're not sure what to share with them, and what not to share, knowing full well the decision will ultimately determine if you end up sharing everything. It's a gross contradiction that I am, myself, so uncomfortable with. So I tend to, in a non-creepy way, watch. Hoping maybe I'll learn something. 

And now I'm done with that thought, the couple have left and another sits in the same spot. I can tell, just by glancing, that they're well seasoned lovers. Does that sound like I'm talking about some rib eye steak of a beautiful roast chicken (had to reference food....again)? He orders drinks whilst she sits down. He returns with a juice and she sips on it. He responds to her juice moustache by wiping it from her face with his thumb. They've probably washed and folded each others' underwear. You can just tell. It's that air of not really actively saying "I care about you, I love you, I think you're a spunk" but rather showing it, very casually, without any hesitation though without the intensity of younger lovers. No grand gestures. Just buying her coffee. Just giving her a napkin without her uttering any need of one. Just knowing.

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Cuddling on the Passengers Side

by Lea Moser http://daydreamofthis.tumblr.com/  @moserlea

It has been many years since we have kissed, but still I think about the sweetness of our love. The innocence of it I shall never feel with another, simply because the submission of time has altered the ability to feel innocent now, in the shadow of the past. How special to reflect on a time when words and hand holding were equal parts poetry in life. When your eyelids glistened with the residue of you and I looked at it in its sparkles and thought about all the words I wanted to share with you, and how comfortable I felt having shared the words that were behind us. Eyes closed, we kissed and I stared, you opened your eyes without expression and stared back. How can eyes look so warm and understanding?

That was 10 years ago. We were just high school lovers with lives of unexpected paths in front of us. Now we live life morphing into adults, into being people concerned with bills and car interiors and pensions. There will never be a love so simple, as the era of technology has engulfed both of our worlds, we hold the secret of each other during a time when we could not escape ourselves and so we escaped the through our bodies and music in the passenger seat of my car, cuddled so close that there air fought to leave our lungs.

I still have your poems, and the journal of poetry I would write when thinking about you, hoping one was good enough to give. You were always a better writer, with better hand writing and words and thoughts. I was jealous of you. I was jealous that you could give me paper with huge meaning and I struggled to express the red throb of my heart with my childish scratches. You helped me see how beautiful language is, and I don’t think you know that the love I have for the written word is the only comparable, innocent fulfilling love I have experienced since we ended our nascent affair.

Like a mummified carcass, our love still in form but transcended to some afterlife. Adult life. What I miss the most from that life was being understood, before the complexities of myself would become sharper, fiercer in the face of another who might want to grasp the interior me the way you did.

I lived it without appreciation thinking love would always be as easy as that between you and me, all those years ago in the hallways and parks of our youth. I love you still in the memory of that time, even fiercer now that I have seen the other side of many lovers whose memories I wish I could erase. Thank you for the love, is what I really wanted to say.

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by Megumi Kajiwara

http://megumikajiwara-works.tumblr.com/

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by Karla Beckt

karlabeckt.tumblr.com

@karlabeckt

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Hunter

by TIffany Atkin

www.tiffanyatkin.com

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First Valentine

by Jill Kleinhans

www.jillkinla.etsy.com

@JILLKINLA

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~I Fell~

by Leona Fietz

leonafietz.tumblr.com

Image credit: Jeanloup Sieff

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by Jay Riggio http://www.jayriggioart.com/

The unreasonable joy and the unspeakable anguish of it all still baffles me, some 17 years later. Even now it means everything, despite meaning nothing at all. The details have disappeared forever and the murky visions of a dream are all that remain. It's a "first" that burrows deep inside the heart and shows itself only on cold winter nights when the realization that there will be no more "firsts" races through the mind. It's destroyed some and made few. It has always been and will always be. Before time. Before you. And long after us. Long after we have said goodbye.

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Big Love

by Marie Bretin

www.mariebretin.com

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by Savina Hopkins http://savinahopkins.blogspot.com.au/