The Unrelated Nouns and Verbs

I have never thought myself to be a poet. I suppose this only compounds the problem.

"Don't be stupid," Hermione had said when she caught me reciting Shakespeare in a silly voice to Ron as an example of Muggle literature. "You're bastardising the poetry! That's not what it should be. Poetry is..."

I can't remember what she thinks poetry is.

Poetry is a collection of unrelated nouns and verbs tossed together that students are expected to overanalyse.

I remember reading Tennyson and Dickinson in grammar school and being confused by the words. The thing with wings? As far as I knew, hope wasn't a thing, per se. A wing was, however. So how could the two go together? It's a confusing thing, this. I remember my teacher saying that if we studied English at university, we would be studying more of these poems, and I felt a stab of pity for English students everywhere.

Poetry is saying that things are what they are not and I should have no part in it, thank you.

Things are a little bit clearer now.

You continue to sleep, unaware of the clichés you inspire, your body draped on mine as I lean back against the armrest of the sofa. Your head rests on my chest, soft as petals, smooth as silk, bright as stars. I would word this better if I knew how. Your hair is spread like a sunburst around your head and my hand is entangled in the damp white-gold locks. Through my half-closed eyes, the room is a warm golden blur. I know the candles at the foot of the bed must be running out of wick and wax. The shadows flicker.

I understand now how a kiss can be more than a kiss. How a touch can be more than just a brushing of skin against skin. You fill me up with the emotions that nimbly elude the words I try to attach to them, denying me the basic human compulsion to categorise things. Sometimes you notice my frustration at my own confusion and you, being the sadist that you are, draw it out with a flourish. A flash of white teeth as you grin at me, spin me in circles, and leave me disoriented. I toss you into the 'infuriating' category and walk sulkily away. And then later, between classes, after hours, during all the in-between times amid Now and Then, I am snatched into closets, empty classrooms, small darkened corners. Again you kiss me, sucking the words from my mouth. I try to take revenge by overpowering you. Sometimes it works. In the wild blur of hands and lips that go where they shouldn't, it would hardly seem to matter.

"You're getting better, Potter," you'd say casually afterwards as you make a show of buttoning your shirt.

But I see how the look in your eyes falters when I smile back. Maybe it's just from your realisation that I'm not as naïve as you imagine me to be. But it's there nevertheless.

And then there are nights like these. Nights like these I love because things stop becoming a competition. Kisses are no longer duels. Embraces are not as rough. It's difficult to see in the dim light, but sometimes I let myself think I can see the coldness disappear from your eyes entirely.Â

I notice goosebumps on your skin from the cold in the tower, and I reach down to grab one of the cloaks on the floor. Yours. I can tell as soon as I touch it: soft, fine, undoubtedly expensive. I drape it over the both of us.

Your spiking the punch during the Yule Ball led to many amusing displays from students and faculty alike. My glasses went missing sometime after my third glass of punch and I approached you thinking you were Pansy. I don't know what you must've been thinking. Now I just assume that you were drunk as well because I never felt too comfortable investigating into the matter.

"Give us a Christmas kiss now," I said, grinning. "Come on, yuletide cheer and all that."

You conceded.

I had never been under any illusions about the nature of us. Alcohol-induced snogs aren't dignified beginnings to relationships, especially when you aren't snogging who you thought you were. You laughed at the expression on my face when your voice finally gave you away. However these snogs are, apparently, good enough for random stress-release on the side. We keep up our antagonism in public. Your sneers and my stubbornness, your calculating wit and my enduring defiance. But sometimes I see how the look in your eyes changes when I smile at you, and I wonder.

I've been wondering more than I should lately.

I wonder if your kisses have been more sincere, less condescending. When I'm alone I try to remember them in detail. Your eyes stare into mine as you lean in. You only close them at the last possible second before your lips meet mine. Softly pressing, again, again, and increasingly insistent. You run your tongue over my bottom lip and I feel your fingers alight at the back of my neck. I push you back against the wall and return the kiss more intensely than you expected. You let out a sigh of what I allow myself to think is satisfaction.

I wonder if your embraces linger more than they used to and I consciously tighten my arms around you now. You hardly respond. You were always a sound sleeper. My mind rewinds to a few hours back when you, sitting patiently on a desk, saw me slipping through the door of the tower. "You're late," you said, and I couldn't discern your tone. My hand reached for yours, entangling with your fingers, while my other hand tugged at your cloak and pulled you close. You were quiet when I leaned into you and pressed my lips to your neck. Your arm slid around my waist, subtly finding itself under my shirt. These movements weren't unfamiliar to me. But normally after this I would continue kissing you, you would slip a hand into my trousers and clothes would come off. But. But this time we just stayed, my head on your shoulder, your arms around me. I felt the rise and fall of your chest against mine, the warmth of your neck on my forehead. I smelled the sharp scent of your cologne and wondered if you had prettied yourself up for me. You? That? For me? Under different circumstances I would have laughed. Too bad it was a waste of effort, I thought and began to pull at your clothes.

I've been wondering more than I should. The subtle looks I shouldn't analyse. The little touches I ought to disregard. I haven't been under any illusions so far, but.

But.

I wonder of possibilities I should not name and declarations I shouldn't speak. I realise I don't know what you think of this. Of us. If in your eyes there is an us at all.

So, tonight Harry Potter learns the function of poetry.

Poetry is a collection of seemingly unrelated nouns and verbs put together to fill in the blanks when we don't want to. The convoluted metaphors are there to hide behind and to use as an excuse for our silence. I'm half-asleep, holding you, and realising this is why people write poems. This: the feeling of incompletion that comes from the charades we play and the things they obscure. An appeal to a higher power regarding the current state of things.

You let a little snore escape, oblivious to my epiphany. I trace half-remembered lines of Byron and Donne across your back and then, as my eyelids droop, lines of my own. Impromptu odes to your hands and your touches and the uncertainty in your eyes.