But strawberries and cigarettes always taste like you

Shout out to whoever commented on my last post. If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die.
Yes.
It’s true, unfortunately. But we don’t have to fall in love with you; if we anything you, you can never die. This post isn’t about love. I need a break from that, I gotta come back down to reality for a sec. We don’t have to fall in love with you for your legacy to live on.
If we love you, if we’re in love with you, if we notice you, if we hate you, if we’re slightly annoyed by you, if we met you once, or if we walked past you in Tesco in every single aisle, and then again at the checkouts, and then again when we were leaving the shop, and then we drove past you when leaving the car park, and then we saw you at work the next day and you smiled a little wider. Part of you will live on in something – a title, a character, a metaphor, an idea.
We all know this. Everything I remember about you will disintegrate away from the image I have of you in my head until you fully disappear, as if you never really existed. But you may find yourself scattered throughout my words – kind of like a horcrux, especially if you’re an asshole. Maybe it’ll be in characters. One of them will have curly hair and a scar across their cheek from when a little girl scratched him in nursery. One of them will eat peoples leftovers instead of buying his own food and think it’s a good idea to use that as an opening line on a first date. One of them doesn’t have a favourite movie, but really likes 8 Mile. Another broke his daughter’s heart.
I try to avoid writing too much about people I actually know into characters, but it’s inevitable. It will always happen. I like my ideas to be both vague and specific, depending on who’s reading.
Maybe the heroine finally found someone who read and framed the poem she wrote about him, rather than ignoring it entirely because he couldn’t understand her shitty handwriting, man fuck you. Or maybe there’s a villain who adorns a tiny, barely visible tattoo of the name of a past lover on their chest because why the fuck would you let someone wear your name like that if you were just going to throw it all away? Maybe the girl’s neighbours are the world’s most miserable couple who work seven days a week on alternating days because they hate each others guts and can’t stand each others ratty voices and hair that’s dyed way too dark for their age. Maybe they have ridiculous ugly chandeliers and a transparent garage so that everybody walking past can admire their shitty massive garden. Maybe this one guy’s dog is dying but it was an asshole dog who made everyone’s life miserable right up until it’s last breath, so he just dumped it’s corpse into the river with no remorse. Maybe it was a female dog who stank of cigarettes and wore bright red PVC dresses and leopard print heels every time she came round to fuck everyones lives up.
Maybe she’s walking down the road crying because a man just assaulted her in an alleyway and she doesn’t want to go home; maybe a guy will ask her what’s wrong, maybe she’ll tell him, maybe he’ll say ‘yeah…what you saying though, can I get your number?’ Maybe you’ll scoff because something like that would never happen in real life, but would it fucking not? Maybe her best friend will laugh at her for watching foreign shows with subtitles, and she’ll muse about the cool guy she smoked with once, who bought her her first ever vanilla latte before they never spoke again. Maybe she’s waiting for her friend to take the morning after pill in a little room and the old man next to her is relentlessly cracking his back every 5 seconds.
Maybe you asked her how she felt and she couldn’t tell you, but two years later you’re reading about a character who’s fallen in love with his brown hair and hazel eyes. Maybe he writes about a man who meets a woman at the bus stop who tells him about the fuckboy-with-benefits she had to cut off because she knew life didn’t always turn out like movies with beautiful people like Mila Kunis and JT in them. Maybe, fifty pages in, you’ll be exasperated about her being such a pussy so far into the book, but on page sixty seven, a bag of blue pills will fall out of her pocket whilst her fourteen year old sister has to actually ask him the goddamn question ‘did you not care when he did that to her?’
Not everyone will find their way into my writing, of course. I said we have to anything you. But we have to really anything you. Maybe you’ll stop reading about guys with amazing eyebrows who refuse to watch Misery but know the right way to hold your hand, a way that convinces you that you’re actually enjoying this show he picked out, or about girls who pretend their parents died and their crush got them pregnant with a baby they had to abort right before P.E.
Safe.
Now Playing: Strawberries & Cigarettes – Troye Sivan