It's one of those mornings where it feel like marionette strings are pulling me awake and out of bed.Girl like painted doll-- pale skin, blue eyes lined in black, pink lips. A blink and a small pick at a zit and the illusion is shattered in the mirror, a thousand fragments of life and reality falling to bounce on the tile floor.
I cough and my body clenches and unclenches, throat screaming in pain, wet globs on the sidewalk making a path to where I have been and where I am going like Gretel with tuberculosis. As I sit in class, the ghost of questing fingers creep along the inseam of my jeans, and my skin crawls, bile rising and threatening to revolt. The dust in the street whips through the air and against my cheek, and it feels and tastes and smells completely foreign to me.
Craning my head around to see his face, I realize I am looking for a dead man everywhere, but looking never brought anyone back to life.
I look at the invitation. I consider, carefully, both sides of the response. The weight of a “yes”, the finality of a “no”. Wonder about propositions. Wonder about lies. Wonder about what “having coffee” really means. I have been reading long enough to become excellent at reading in between the lines. Wonder where “coffee” ends and “something more” starts. Wonder where and when the time for explanations is. Wonder about how much sway resemblance has. Wonder if flattery will help. Wonder if I really am that sort of girl. I make my choice. Wait five minutes. Find myself back again, looking at those words. Reconsidering. I leave again. Come back. Decide on one thing at the moment—I desperately, desperately need someone to listen. I realize even as I navigate away that I will accept. Not now, but sometime soon. Sometime soon, I will be back, still needing an ear, a shoulder, some reassurance, a sounding board. Actors have stand-ins; why can’t we have stand-ins for life when the leads come down with something? Isn’t that what’s already in practice? Leading lady; leading man; understudy; stage manager like magician. I feel the tug on the invisible marionette strings again, dragging me across the stage. The audience claps. A brilliant performance. Red and white flowers sent. Red lights flash like strobes. Roxanne without Sting to validate her. No red dress, not tonight. You don't care if it's wrong or if it's right.
The first sob startles me. There's momentary wonder and glances around to see if the sound really came from me. The next thing I know, I am pounding the sides of my fists against the cold tiles of the shower's stall, the weak trickle from the showerhead flowing down my back as I plead with whoever will listen to me through the tears that fall, unnoticed, down the drain with the rest of the water. "Please, please, don't let me shut down again. I don't want to. I don't want to!" The voice is uncanny, desperate, someone speaking from inside of me whom I didn't know existed. She sounds small, scared, exhausted. She sounds like she has something to live for, but no idea how to fight for it.
I have always held that crying in the shower doesn't count. Then again, I've always held that crying is something that shouldn't be done at all.
Broken people don't know how to fix each other any better than a shoemaker can fix a broken camera's lens. It's all about perspective, and if you aren't willing to see it from mine, then there is absolutely nothing I can do for you, no matter how badly you want someone else to do all the work and excavating of your buried skeletons for you. Scars and substances and smoke and mirrors aside, trying to play with your shards like a puzzle yields absolutely nothing but bloody fingers and a bad taste in my mouth-- Colgate and Camel Lights.
Walking away and waiting are pretty much the same thing. Both are about an expanse of time as tangible as miles and walls that need to be hurdled. A phone that doesn't ring is still a phone. It's not like a tree falling in the forest-- it still doesn't make any sound. Effort expended is a life-lesson in physics-- what you give is what you get, and I'm tired enough to not get out of bed anymore on my own accord. The Peroni on the nightstand and the ashtray on the balcony keep track of the fact that I am still alive. The shape under my sheets suggests I am not.
The alarm buzzes constantly. No matter how many times I paw at it, it doesn't stop keeping track of time slipping by. The numbers on the display mean nothing anymore. 7 at night and sleep. 4 AM and awake. 2 and full sunlight and waking up for the first time.
You need like a newborn child; like a ravenous baby; like Romulus and Remus searching for the she-wolf to suckle them, mortal women no good. The mirror doesn't lie well enough to me; the constant checking reaffirms it; the pain and the weakness cinch the deal. Mortal, mortal, mortal. It rings through me like a death knell. There is absolutely nothing I can do for you, if you are not willing to do anything in return.
“In absentia” is more than a role-call response.
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