| — | Kahlil Gibran (via mirroir) |
| — | Daniel Stephensen (via growing-orbits) |
| — | E. Y. Harburg (via my-dark-star) |
It was a rough and raunchy encounter, even the conversation beforehand was rigid and logical. “How badly would this hurt you?” Quick jerks and shivers of the body surging between the two of us. Faint gasps and whispers dropped behind every claw, each bite. We change positions and find new destinations for the marks. We collide so recklessly, two silhouettes shifting in and out of the light- searching for comfort in the darkness. Suddenly it changes, she is directly beneath me, stealing breath from my lungs. Skin breaks in the last embrace and then, it’s over. She locks me in a stare I still can’t explain. Her eyes telling me that this was more than some last fuck or one last session of ‘making love’. This was goodbye. This was everything that made our relationship packed into one last rush of life to cope with the knowledge that we’d never be this close again. I think about it everyday. “How badly would this hurt you?” “Well, how long is goodbye?”
How long have I been trying to do this; find the right phrases to explain how alone and awkward I feel? Seems like forever. Every once in a while it gets rewarded with some false sense of home. But, maybe that’s my fault…getting too comfortable. Maybe I’ve been wrong all along and the smiles are never worth the scars. Maybe before taking chances I should stop to remember that memories can’t hold me, they can barely hold me together.
But, what about the moments when I see myself in her? Even if I don’t speak up, my gaze says it all. “How long have I been trying to do this; find the phrases to explain how you make awkward and alone feel right? A smile that seems like forever, and a hold that feels like home.”
How long have I been trying to do this?
Well, when did we meet?
“She’s going to break your heart in two, it’s true… ‘Cause everybody knows…the things she does to please… she’s just a little tease…”
When you look at her, it’s hard to know exactly what you’re looking at. She’s got to be a figment of your imagination; a bad, hypothetical argument, tenuously thrown together by your subconscious — because nothing real could ever be so… comically contrary.
This girl doesn’t even strike you as an actual person. She’s more like a commercial art-school film, an amoral-morality play, or some other pretentious expression of contradictory anti-meaning.
So naturally cliche, that it’s artificially novel — like a breath of fresh air from a respirator. You don’t willingly breathe her in, but she can inflate and deflate your lungs, without invitation.
There’s no ghost in her machine, just predictable programming.
She doesn’t even make an effort to conceal it… her post-human seductions, and post-modern malfunctions.
Whether she’s coming, or going — she always seems to be leaving. Melted mascara, smeared lipstick, torn dress; she’s an existential catastrophe. She’s limping away from the apocalyptic after-hours party, on a broken high-heel; natural-disaster heart, radioactive psyche, supernova ego still in tact.
The world is burning down around her, and all she can do is suck hard at the ashes of calamity — trying to light the end of a busted cigarette. You hate to see her go, because you loved to watch her bleed…
She’s blowing long-distance kisses from the fringes of humanity. She sends you postcards from the void:
“I’ve seen the future, baby. It is murder…”
Wish you were here.
Even with all of the nice things that she shows you, the sensations she helps you to feel. Gives the feeling that she knows you, blurs your knowledge of the real.
She’s still just a woman. She’ll still break your heart.
I get so sad when thinking about our time alone because it gave people these broken views. I wish I could’ve shown them the smiles I drew from you, or the pain I stole away. If they could’ve counted the tears made in laughter as well as they counted those from agony. Maybe then they wouldn’t deny that we’re right for each other. Maybe they wouldn’t have said I was too good for you. Maybe you wouldn’t have listened.
I would’ve turned a deaf ear to it all. From what I knew, you would’ve done the same, but you were so different in private.
It has to stop. The outbursts, the blood, the swelling. But these bricks are the only thing that keep me from attacking him- all of the hims in your life. “Why can’t you love me the way I love you?” You don’t answer, you can’t. And that says enough for me. I grab my clothes and leave, my thoughts as sporadic as the words before you. I walk down the street and find my car, “deep breaths, Aurora.” Fuck that. My screams are loud and grungy, a guttural roar that invites a burning sensation into my lungs. I love it. Keys still haven’t met the ignition, I’m too busy trying to rip the steering wheel from its hinges. “It has to stop.” And I do. I pretend I haven’t been crying for the last hour and I walk into work nursing the hand that was just introduced to the brick pillars outside. Now my day is filled with fake smiles and the question of why my fingers are twitching so badly. I lie every time, but the truth comes in painful images. I hate you. Phone goes off “Hey wyd tonight?” I pretend to have plans to break so she feels important.
We’re at my house. The lights go off and so do clothes. The dark allows our hands reason to wander until there’s only one thing left to do. I cover her mouth and sometimes pretend it’s you. Her screams are loud but muffled, I’m almost convinced. When we finish I lay there and wonder if he fucks you as well as I do. She interrupts my torture by grabbing my face so she can make eye contact. “Aurora, I think I’m in love with you.” “This has to stop….soon.”
