Amity & Please Call Once More
And so I avoid my ‘home’ and sit on the steps of the residence he used to reside, before. Two hours with my reminiscence. Alone only with what his face used to contort into when he was perplexed. And she comes out, because she heard me breathing. She touches my face. I am on the carpet in his hallway. I am on his bed and she comes in and asks if I have a cigarette. We smoke inside with the window closed. She says nothing. She hasn’t changed his sheets. She doesn’t sleep, she eternally utters, because she feels he may still come home. She grasps my fist and her face is an effeminate version of his. She doesn’t cry, and I don’t. We sit and ache in silence.
I tell her I don’t know what to do. I lay my plans out, with one hand outstretched towards the ceiling. My palm is a landscape of lines. I don’t feel anything, I tell her. I don’t think he’s coming home, I tell her. I don’t think he’s still around, I tell her. I don’t look at the stars for the infinite number I could wish upon, I tell her. I noticed the stars this evening, though. By mistake. And I don’t think he’s there, either. She looks at my palm. She looks at the window. She looks at his sheets. She tilts her ash onto the floor. She looks at me. I look at her. He was not my child.
She agrees with my wish to escape. She lowers her head when I talk of the blonde one. She utters my name when I mention the photos of the taut skin and bones of sixteen. We sit and ache in silence.
She leaves when the man down the hall closes their bedroom door. I sit and stare for a while. I stare at his pillowslips and sheets and photographs. I can’t sleep for the scent of him. I sit and ache in silence.
When the sun comes, I pull a dark brown hair from under his pillow. I mourn a little more. I wish upon every single star that is yet to light up, tomorrow night. I wish upon every Christian persons prayers. I don’t think of anything else. At one point I wish I’d never met him. I don’t hurriedly take it back. I wear it on my thick figure and sleep-stranded face. I sit and ache in silence.
I don’t think of you, or you or you. I don’t think of him or her or her or her or him. I think of myself. I think of what I must look like. I think of how I will not wear close to anyone else. I think of how I will cut everyone off. I think of how I will leave. I think of being abandoned with myself for always. I think of the simple affection I crave and nothing more. I think of how content that would feel. How the swell and throb of evenings with beautiful bodies would be more than enough. I think of love or like and feel ill.
And I get home and write a list. Of all the things I will do and all the figures I will not fight with. I write a list of all the names I know won’t trip over themselves thinking of me mid-stride. I think of what their skin would feel like under thumb. I write a list of things I wish I’d done better, not done at all.
I wish I had spent nights with him, with my oppressive heat oppressing his. I wish he would have been the last person I told I loved. Whereas, real life resides just under my clear and sad. I never once told him I loved him. I never once curled an arm around his spine and pulled him in and under. Yet he will be the last person I tell, endlessly, that I love.
And I don’t sit and ache in silence. I proposition someone nameless and faceless. Someone I know won’t trip over themselves thinking of me mid-stride. I make plans to gain affection Someone beautiful to make up for the ugly I am.
