22. we’ll ease ourselves into the night

watching the sunset with you was like a dream come true.
and the sky was golden, the snow swirling in the clear winter air.
the snow was sparse and there was little of it, but every flake was magic, every second we stood there watching the clouds swim across the vast expanse of fiery orange was a moment to remember.

and then we parted ways.

i’ll see you again today. 
but sleep evades me and my eyes are slowly gluing together now. i would sleep if i could, but there’s never any time. ironic.
and though i didn’t spend all night wondering what it will be like with X and you there, when we go to see that play, i still didn’t sleep. and you know, it doesn’t really matter because me and X will be over.
today, if i can do it, a little later if i can’t.
and i spoke to my mother of it and she said have you talked with X properly? are you sure you want to let this one go? and i know i have. i know i do, purely because i just can’t do it any more.

i dreamt of being single for so long now and every day that brings me closer to Valentine’s day, that dream is reinforced. my friends are trying to find themselves guys before the fourteenth and here i am trying to get rid of one. how marvelously original of me.

and today will be a long day, i know.
not so much for you or X or whoever, as for me – a morning lecture nearly awaits as i sit here rubbing my bloodshot eyes.

that matters not so much.

we’ll meet up on par with the setting sun you and me watched melt to liquid gold yesterday and we’ll ease ourselves into the night.
and then – whatever will be, will be.

pause to breathe

Pause to breathe,
The air like shards of broken glass;
Can’t reach the lungs
And stars of forever waltzing in front of the eyes:
Each new leaf a blacked out page torn out
The play stopped, the script thrown out 

That’s how it goes. No, it isn’t fair.
On n’aime que ce qu’on ne possède pas tout entier.

21. someone who i don’t want enough to love

resolution is still lost. questions posed, answers comatose.
and one question haunts me, a bat out of hell. 
why can’t i just say to X you know what, boy, it ain’t working, so lets just pretend that this never happened and walk out of each other’s lives. how bout that? 

but that’s a stupid question. and though i have to look deep inside myself for the answer, i know why.
i’m both cruel and wicked at times, and yet, my heart is not made of glass and his puppy eyes always stop me in my tracks of obliterating his dreams.

and it’s driving me crazy, this enforced entrapment by one single look. this fear of kicking to death someone who’s already down.
and i tried to say goodbye over the weekend, but he wouldn’t let me.
it’s like he sensed it coming, texting me, writing e-mails, calling persistently, telling me that we’ll get out of this rough patch and be as happy as we once were. he even got his friend to write me a message to ask me to give it one more shot. and tough i didn’t believe him that we’d be happy, because i never felt happy with him, it was too much effort to turn away and never look back. it was too much of something i didn’t have.

so, here i come, still in chains: never his, still not yours, tied by rules and conventionality to someone who i don’t want enough to love.
still a hunter, a white tigress on a prowl for her next piece of meat.

i may be wounded, but i’m not dead.

20. i’m no mad doll, just a run-of-the-mill one

yesterday marked five months since the day i became X’s girlfriend.
on paper at least.
and it’s kind of scary in some strange way how long that is. for me, in any case.

it was just like any other day.
we didn’t even speak on the phone: he didn’t call and i had other people to speak to. i may be dependent, but i’m a free woman, or rather girl, still. and the funny thing is, i don’t think he even realised how frustrated and trapped i was feeling until this morning, when i decided that our anniversary (or in the very least, the day following it) ought to go out with a bang.

i had a perfect excuse, not that i really needed one, but hey. he was meeting up with a girl who blatantly likes him, behind my back. and when i say likes him, i mean likes him a lot.

she never told me that she did, but it’s evident. not just to me, to others too, and you know that. you were the one who suggested it in the first place. 
she talks about him, like he’s her boyfriend and not mine. and that’s alright. i don’t mind.

in fact, generally, i’d welcome such turn of events, ignore it or maybe gossip about it for a bit, but today i felt like drama. and not just any drama, but a argintinian-style melodrama, where every nuance is outrageous, where shock is everything and truth is nothing.

and that’s what i always wanted my life to be like, ever since i watched “Wild Angel”, or rather “Muñeca Brava”. i wanted to transform into that fearless heroine, that mad doll who’d always get what she wanted, no matter the cost. who actually knew what she wanted. who knew how to live.

but i realise i’m no mad doll, just a run-of-the-mill one, trying to be unique. still, what does it matter?
for a moment in my life, albeit a fairly brief one, i thought it counted who you were, but it doesn’t really. what matters is how well you can pretend you’re something you’re not. and i do that well.
a million different smiles, looks, mannerisms.

and so we fought. bitter words. silent anger coursing through viens. his. mine. 
but i know before the night falls, he’ll want to be in my arms again and i resent that fact. 

i resent resenting him and resenting me.
but that’s the way it’s gonna be.

the death within the life of us…

wish we’d have cordoned it off,

like an act of protest,
the wind beating at the cordons,
trying to break down the strips of pinstriped yellow
their fluorescence screaming out
for the whole world to see

and 

i long we’d start again
so we could have barricaded it off,
wooded board on wooden board,
vow on vow on vow,
trapping death and trapping love 

so that A&E men in their white coats
would not get past us to resuscitate it 

so that our love could go on being
the death within the life of us.