For Him - Shawn Mendes

IT'LL burn

HANNAH

I fell in love with a boy knowing his dedication to art. This boy, just a teenager, was so indescribably driven. Among the plethora of reasons to adore him, his amity for music seemed the most obvious. I knew the control his career had on him, yet I fell for him still.

The intensity of Shawn's mind strengthened and ruptured, simultaneously drawing him to and away from the things that mattered most to him. For the most part I could read him, and as we grew older the language of his eyes spoke more than his lips ever dared. I knew when they were alight, and I knew when to leave him to his craft. The music was too spectacular to be denied.

He had millions watching him, analyzing his music to praise it, critique it, breathe it. Nothing could be published until it was perfect, but when it came to his songs, perfection was simply unreachable. He knew what he wanted and until he created exactly that, sleep became a foreign notion. He knew the audience he needed, and he would do anything to make his music live on. He helplessly craved continuum.

His intellect always drew away suspicion of insanity, yet I was oblivious to the power of his passion. I failed to read the complexity in his eyes, and the weight of devotion that caterwauled behind them. A complacent energy, of such, hidden behind a facade so well protected.

I fall victim to the question when every thing is still and quiet; of an uncertainty that the boy I had fallen in love with was who I thought he was at all. I question how deep beneath his aging olive skin the obsessive Shawn lay, and how excruciating the hunger to keep his music breathing must have felt. Though I'm mad at him, the prospect of his agony sends me into a bout of jarred grief. I grip the sheets and remind myself I did know him. I knew him well, but it's nearly impossible to know everything. Sometimes it's too late before you do.

At night I don't sleep, but lately less because of guilt. I miss him. Everything smells of him, and when it does, for the tiniest moment it all isn't true. I lay as the moon is replaced by the sun, and the first of the morning light catches my window and pours onto the empty side of the bed in flickers and specks of blinding yellow. I look away. I feel hollow, and again I'm reduced to tears. 

I love him too much to hate him for what he did.  He told me there was no choice. I believed him.

For the past few months he'd been saying the same thing over and over to me, and I've give anything to comprehend it all again. I wish I'd listened properly. Now I can't seem to get it out of my head. 

People, he'd tell me, care more when you're gone.