90. we lay on the deck and count the stars

morning
8:30 a.m.

he did not recieve the text. good. so we chat. friends, not lovers, that we are: i question him of things and he shares his good news with me. at midnight. not that i didn’t ask him to, but he doesn’t bother informing you. funny?

relieved, i don’t think of the saved blushes and the heat does not rise to my cheeks: it doesn’t need to. 
a sigh escapes like a fly through the open window, its wings no longer beating against the cold clear pane of glass.  
phone on, i wait to hear a beep. from you or him, it hardly seems to matter.

i sleep lightly as of late, or as of early. since our trio of sleepover nights, it’s been better, but sometimes, i will wake up in the night and think you are with me, curled up on the floor.
no longer an insomniac, i don’t know how to classify myself. i want a tidy name to sum it all up. there isn’t one.

i’m on the edge right now and it’s nothing to do with the pair of you. my future lies within these very moments, encapsulated in the smell of old books and pheromones surging.
i call the number. it is busy. so i call again.
right now, all i care about is that the phone is picked up and they listen to me, if even for a while.

evening
9:30 p.m.

i heard a no. loud and clear, like a dead weight going into cold blue-black water.
deep, guttural sounds of a storm brewing. but the storm is already over. we lay on the deck and count the stars.

88. soon, soon

yes, you are right, i should like to hide my head in the sand and pretend all that darkness is nothing but light shining through a filter tinted the colour of night. i should pretend last night never happened, i should pretend i am content here by your side in the leafy undergrowth of life where all i see are roots uprooted, dying in the sun. and would you blame me?

i could not sleep last night, thinking of the shining lights enveloping you, pillow over my head to drown out hurt. i wondered if i ought to watch a film, but that would be defeat. no, i would lay here and count your wrongs, my wrongs, the cracks in the ceiling of our hearts, thoughts, lives.
soon, soon, the artery would rupture and drown out the pain.
soon, soon.

i knew i couldn’t cut myself. what with? a knife? i could almost hear you saying don’t be silly in that tone of yours. and pills, what good would it do? only that i may die without salvation, without the knowledge of how to cling to love by the skin of your fingertips. or maybe i know that already.

and i can’t live with all that poison, not even just for tonight. i would fight but my limbs have gone to sleep and i am faced with a picture of you in the club, music pounding, drinks flowing, girls dancing.
and i realise i can’t say that there is anything missing. there is not.

48. sweet as lemon sorbet

half my life, i’m freefalling, the other half – looking back on the sights i’ve seen in those few moments before my parachute opened, before the maddening rush of adrenaline was curbed by my safety net, the soft fabric above me saving me.
you are that fabric – the fabric of my life spun by the yarn of your love, by the generosity of those hands turning the spindle. 
all because you feel responsible for me. or maybe not.

in the end, my life’s my life: a merger of past faces, names, soft hands that once caressed my skin or longed to do so.
and you.
the thread of you’s the thread of me. and i want everyone you know to love me, unbearably, exquisitely so that you know the worth of love. so that you can count broken smiles knowing something inside them breaks for me.

an only child, i knew how to be painfully selfish. i learnt it well, my only teacher – solitude and parents’ love. but here i am, sister in tow, and still that only child rhetoric lives on in me. so once in a while, i feel in need of broken dreams of others to see my hope reflected in those pieces of looking-glass.

and if you can’t blame me who can blame me?
my friend once told me i was cruel to boys, to men, male counterparts. that i was cruel because my skattered gazes never solidified, my touch was soft but vapid, my hands gentle but uncaring. so what? i said it’s my revenge. 

and so it is.
as sweet as lemon sorbet melting on my lips.

36. and jokes don’t count

we all want a fairytale, don’t we?
a prince, a castle, a fairy godmother and a happy ending.

us, girls, seem to be born with this idea that one day, a prince will find us. yes, he will definitely find us and sweep us off our feet. it’s not a collective motion either – my prince will not be her prince; if fact, her prince will be not much of a prince at all.
each girl will get her own version of perfection, but my perfection will be the perfection, is what we think.

you nearly asked me out this thursday. exactly two months since we first started on this journey, on this path to love and need and yearning.
it was the first of the month, the first of april – april fool’s day, no less – the and somehow it felt that if you asked me then, it’d be a joke. and jokes don’t count.
i couldn’t settle for the flawed perfection, non. it had to be my way or the highway. it always does.

so give me a fairytale, mon coeur. show me the the world through the rose-tinted glasses and whisk me off to the castle i’ve dreamed off since i was a little girl.

it’s easter after all.

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.