You and I sat at the edges of riverbanks and contemplated running away. We held our fingers above stovetops and burned them to a crisp, erasing our fingerprints. You and I shaved our heads, the chunks of hair hitting the ground, blending, the long tresses intertwined. You and I threw out everything we had ever owned, giant trash bag of memories we could not recall. Musicboxes and high school letters. Books, the pages ripping from their spines and twirling through the air like birds and ballerinas. We threw out small dresses and photos, pairs of printed socks, earrings shaped like crescent moons. You and I ran away, without mist or mystery. We left home with the sun glaring on our backs, glinting, in brand new glasses we picked at a fair. You and I left home and didn’t look back. At the train station you said goodbye, and when I looked back at you, your hair had grown back and you wore the dress you had outgrowned two summers ago. You were beautiful, all white and virginal. You said ciao, aurevoir. You blew kisses from the platform. You stood on tiptoes as the train pulled away.
I feel you struggling, beating hard against these walls I’ve built around myself, building bridges for the moats that surround me. I could say that you’re bewitched, but that sounds awfully vain and petty, and those weren’t my intentions at all. If I could tell you one thing, I’d say that you’re wasting your time, because I’ve never learned how to love anybody and I’m awfully hard to please. I know that I’m terribly picky, because any girl in her right mind would be absolutely flattered to have you to herself at three in the morning via webcam or as a drowsy voice on the other end of the line. I hate to say it, but…you’re a bother. It’s no poetic or fancy and not nice at all. But I’m none of those things either. I’m crude and selfish, and frankly stupid. I’m afraid of relationships almost as much as I detest them. I hate the thought of belonging, of being paired with someone when getting talked about, I hate the responsibility of being in a relationship. Frankly, I’ve never felt arms around me as anything other than prison bars.
What is the magic word uttered to stop uncontrollable crying?
Lately this insecurities sit on my shoulders and whisper mean things in my ear and point out all the people that are better than me. I shrink inside these clothes that fit too tight, this skin that doesn’t fit right, and I am drowning in these things that no one else can see. Lately my insecurities sit on my shoulders and they pile up until my shoulders droop from the weight of all the things that make me less than perfect. Nothing makes me happy anymore. Lately my insecurities sit on my shoulders and make my bones hurt, I’m all stiff joints and creaky knees and an overwhelming feeling of weariness. I sleep to pass the time because everything seems like a filler. Read your textbook and go to class, plie un deux trois, watch movies that never seem to stay with you, read books that just don’t make sense. I wish something would make sense.
Being with people who just don’t give a fuck makes me feel better than I have in weeks. I feel like I’m slipping somewhere dangerous and I don’t care. I just don’t care about much anymore.
And I hate the thought of waltzing in and out of your life. But sometimes I need you here, a phone call away, a small distance between our bodies. And my insecurities and my pride and the millions of other fucked up things that keep me lonely prevent me from reaching out, from taking your hand, from asking you to stay. Please just stay.
I have been waiting for you, watching for you. A flash of your bright eyes, your jet black hair, the way your nose kind of curves down but it somehow only adds to your appearance. Your melt me into puddles, turn my bone into goo. I can’t describe the way I feel when you’re sitting inches away from me and I’m looking straight into your eyes that seem to be of every color. I can’t explain the comfortable silence that spans the small distance betweens out bodies, how it feels like I know everything about you and yet nothing at all. I loved you since I was hardly more than a child. And you love me too. Sometimes you do. At night I remember sitting outside with you on a Summer night and thinking that I’d never see you again, but never having the courage to kiss you under an inky sky. And a Summer later I found you again, but my hair was longer and lighter, and I had been a thousand persons that year. Each more broken and destructive than the next.
