113. you would have done it

breaking up is never easy i know, but i have to go – the abba song plays on a loop in my head, ringing in my ears.
is it time to call it quits?
count the losses and move on?
i don’t know. we’re just about to move in together. i know, wow! two weeks til we finally land in each other’s pocket. and i’ve been waiting for this. and you don’t care. you can’t even be bothered to buy the plates when i’ve bought all the cutlery, the knives, the pots and pans.
i think back on us and wonder if you ever cared. was there something always niggling in the back there?

three years five months. a long time.
how many girls could you have fucked in that time begs the question. how many more women like the french madame would have offered to suck you off if you’d been single? mind you, it clearly didn’t stop her. approaching you in your lunch break day after day, a preying mantis, with luscious lips and killer eyes (imagination, my darling, is no friend of mine). she’d have seduced you in no time. you said yourself you would have done it, had i not been in the way waiting for you back in london, withering away like a flower in the desert.

for what are all the men in the world if i can’t have you?
a common misconception of women in love.
i wonder if the air is clearer now, when i don’t love you in the same way i did. the heart stops still. it waits for you, as we continue to flitter the best years of our lives on each other.

77. sometimes i just need to know that you won’t die

the week is nearly over. again.
and it feels like rain on skin in the heat of summer, raising goosebumps in spite of its warmth.

i never want anything to end.
not even nightmares.
i drag them out carefully, tossing and turning, roasting, like a pig, in my own cold sweat.
i had one every night this week. sometimes two. and i remember. i don’t keep tabs on my subconsiousness because it scares me. the brutality of the mind always scares me. and i dream of death. of death and failure.
y flores. flores para los muertos.

right now, my world is a house made of paper: cards with pretty scribbles on them, where blanche‘s words i lived in a house where dying old women remembered their dead men have more than substance; they have depth to go on and on, revolving in my head.

i’ve seen them from every angle. i swear.

what is it with death?
i’ve always said i have to die before the one i love. i couldn’t stand life otherwise. and i’ve made you promise you won’t die before me. i’ve made you promise me the unthinkable, the unpredictable, the unpromisable.

i did it just because sometimes i just need to know that you won’t die.

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.

43. and the glass slipper never shatters

our whole life is a mess of those fridays. we know them so well. the fridays when we go somewhere and one of us, at some point, any point at all, ends up feeling miserable.

i’m no magician, my love. can’t turn grey into a million of colours, can barely turn grey at all. but together we almost manage, the shade changing from darkness to light, from dawn to night.
friday was nothing more than that, you must understand. a sort of middle ground for all our ghosts to come out. and mine did. X was there, as was his new love interest, or rather his soon-to-be ex-love-interest.
she goes through men faster than i go through lingerie and yes, we know her. she catches our train sometimes and don’t you just love the way she talks of her life so freely? i never could quite muster that attitude. you know the one: where casual sex is just another bad habit she really must give up; where a ciggie on the sly hasn’t hurt anyone and two-timing is merely a way to make two people happy at the same time.
but no, i do exaggerate.

still, do not think me bitter for i am not. not at all. and it only seems so because i’d rather people see a tint of jealousy in me than see nothing at all.

and you must remember your promise: you said you won’t get upset at such occasions. 
and when the past runs before your retinas again, scanning for weakness, don’t be too quick to give up on our happy ending, where cinderella meets her prince charming.

and the glass slipper never shatters.

14. we all have dreams that won’t come true

so you’ve come back.
i’ve seen you with my own eyes today, the unruly curls of your hair falling on your face just slightly.
never a fan of curly hair, i don’t know why i’m meant to find you attractive. thought, you know, there is a delicate beauty in the sharpness of the contours of your face, the cheekbones protruding outwards, upwards, making a clean sweep. 

but you know, a concept of beauty was always alien to me. say what you will, but i can barely look at X and he’s your typical handsome guy, your typical ain’t-he-a-good-looking-boy. 

if i think about it, i’ve never seen a man who i could not find a bad feature in, physically or otherwise. 

i ask for too much.
i ask for the impossible. and oddly, sometimes i get it.

i told myself that this year i’d expect a little less. that i wouldn’t ask for what i can’t give back, but i now realise that was always the case. i never took without giving, no matter how little i was given. and yet, there was always just one thing i knew i’d never give wholly – myself. i could give a part of myself without a problem, but to give the whole of oneself – the dreams, the pain, the hopes and fears, the memories and future, the past and present… no, that i would not give.

i’m sure i could if i tried.
anything, with a little bit of determination and skill, is possible.

but i’m my own woman.
you wouldn’t want me if i wasn’t, so that’s ok. nor would Y or X or Z. the whole of my entourage seems to love me because i seem invincible.
you know that.
i know that. 
we both know that, really, you’re in love with an idea of an independent woman and i’m in love with the idea of a man making me dependent, tying me down in such a way that i don’t even know he’s doing it until it was too late.

we all have dreams.

we all have dreams that won’t come true.