down in me

In the sea of faces I groped noses and hair-handfuls and poked eyes, blindly feeling through until I stumbled upon yours: perfectly moulded under the fleshy pads of my fingers and palms; the crook of the nose at just the right angle to the bend of my thumb, the rosy cheeks pliant beneath my fingertips, and a jaw line, plainly pointed in my specific direction. An awkward position, to be sure, but one into which we couldn’t help but fall. We are the clock-watchers, the song-singers, the passively-aggressive, tragic romantics of this story. We amble along unsure, viewing everything askew, watching mostly from without, quietly humming to each other.

Stretched out with my legs perched on his lap, a cigarette between my lips, is my most comfortable position. Except maybe for that moment in bed, when I turn onto my stomach and drift off to sleep, safe in the knowledge that I’m being watched. Much later, when I open my eyes to find his, I pretend he never slept. It’s selfish and illogical I know, but some needs don’t answer to reason and needs longing for fulfillment are 95% of the impetus for nearly everything in life.

“You give me magic and I give you grief.”

I wonder about this discrepancy, but gamely end up putting it down to my distorted sense of self. I take comfort from his words, I take comfort from his skin and though it does happen, there’s very little of his I don’t take comfort from. And of that from which I take no comfort, I take knowledge, experience, or something equally useful. The point is I’m lazy, but lucky in some respects. I find comfort I can take, positions I can hold, and sometimes that’s enough.

Why do you love me if I taste like wrought-iron bars through droplets of rain? My kiss of bronze cast in late morning sun shade coats your tongue in gold leaf. I’m woolly sheep hobbling along the fence, determined to get my fluffy white coat caught on the wire. I think about cotton, soft but slightly abrasive if you squash it too tightly and rub it back and forth across your spine.

I think of merging this paragraph with another cotton story (maybe you’ll see that one later) so I can make a longer, story, an über-story, a story with more endurance and determination than I could ever hope to wish for. But it doesn’t go together, I say, it doesn’t go. It doesn’t matter, I reply, it doesn’t really matter to anyone at all. But it does sort of matter, to me in an obsessive-compulsive kind of limit-enforcing sort of way. So instead I’m commenting on myself and the process in my head while I speak to Mr Notepad as I often do in my solitary cell. I realise this doesn’t go with that either, but I’m practicing, right now, just practicing feeling for my boundaries. Yes, they’re there and there and a bit over here, too. They spring back like foam from my fingertip. Everything’s okay, then, everyone’s accounted for, we can continue with the tale.

Why do you love me if I taste of your mother’s sour milk and your father’s sour sperm? My kiss of strawberry jam sticky lips turns mouldy on your chin. A mouldy goatee, I exclaim! A mould goatee. What about that, huh? This is curious and wonder-making and alarming in a grossly sweet way.

Why do you love me if I reek of cigarettes and sometime lush drug-addicted homeless prostitutes and carelessness and wine? Why do you kiss me with your pure child aching mouth of innocent lust for a salty glaze cupcake turned full-on stomachache treat? I will devour the melty gooey chocolate and smack my lips and lick my brown fingertips clean to the bone. My gruesome (yet adorable) table manners will make you wish you’d never asked me out to dinner.

In the end I’m almost overwhelmed with the need to remove the second paragraph so the first, third and fourth can stand united as one and free from bloated self-talk, as maybe they were meant to all along. No, no, I say, that’s just crazy talk, I say, mad loony googoofliploopy cuckoo clock stuff. I feel you’d expect that, you’d expect that from me because I’m neat, so neat and quiet. Who’s right? Me? Or me?

This is us. Who we are as well as what and where we’ve been. This is what happens, the way I see it, the way you saw it. That’s what I’ll tell them when they ask. And they will ask, of course, they’re very inquisitive. I’ll show them this one and this one, and that other one I like so much. And I’ll squint and recall and proclaim, isn’t it beautiful? We were young once and wise once and childlike forever. Fragments that would likely go unnoticed were gleeful moments that we lived eagerly and urgent with a perspective that only comes from being that particular you, in that particular space, at that particular time. This is us finally safe and free, and we weren’t the only ones. There were others and in consonance we spun rare wonders from trees and lead, dust and colours, ones and zeroes, found objects; extracting every ounce of glimmering beauty from the edge of one world to the core of another. This is us. In a time of upheaval, a time of war, of great heartache both personal and universal, specific and widespread, ephemeral and everlasting. We’re drawn with a simple picture, chained by a string of letters, exhaled in the same breath. Interconnected by seeming happenstance when in fact, we were foretold by million-year old stardust, the same stardust that now flecks our wandering eyes. And you, you will get to see it all, you will watch the universe’s story unfold before your breathless presence. Not precisely the way it happens in bits at a time, interrupted stops and starts, pain and separation and grief. You’ll experience it together, full, complete, unfettered by perceived limitations of time and space, undisturbed by reality. This is us, I’ll whisper and I’ll show them those and maybe some of these, too. And they will ooh and aah with large eyes wide and their gently pursed lips will mouth our words in past tense while drifting toward their future dream, just as we did.
This is us. And we will be them.

People take their lives into their own hands all the time. Risky propositions are a matter of course for some. I’m not a thrill-seeker, though, I’m a comfort-courter. Sleeping in your presence? The ultimate show of limitless trust, like a feline offering you its tender, soft underbelly. Vaguely aware of the consequences, I clumsily hoisted myself onto the ledge, seduced by the deepest darkest blue shroud. That one that envelops you in infinity. Two seconds of that elusive child-like wonder? That’s well worth the price of admission.

“He’s dead.”

“What?”

“He’s dead, he’s fucking dead.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“I’m not shitting you. He’s fucking dead.”

On this ledge just wide enough to nestle my body like a cement cradle, I’m not looking down. For the first time in forever, I’m not looking down. It could be said that nothing separates me from death. For the first time in forever, however, I sit in calm acceptance. Not in wonder or pain or shock or disillusionment and definitely not the usual morbid fascination with its mechanics. No, we simply sit for once, side by side, in acceptance of each other and the way things are. The way things are.

“No, he can’t be. You’re fucking with me, I know you are.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not. They’re saying it was an accident but you know…”

“Know what? Know what the fuck what?”

I’m not looking down. This being the only time when up holds my gazing attention more efficiently than down. It’s cold in this night sea breeze but I’m more interested in the silver-lit expanse all around me. How it crackles in its nature, ebbs and flows, how it exists so effortlessly harmonious with itself. Why is it that such openness can only be experienced alone and at night? The water washes in and out and over me on the shore to my left. The night moves near imperceptibly above me, trickling towards dawn. But not yet. It’s not time yet. It’s not time.

Why? Why did you do this to me? Why couldn’t you wait just that much longer? I have to, why shouldn’t you? What makes you so fucking special, your hurt so much fucking worse than mine?

I slept. Five stories up on the edge of the earth. Under the bare glow, I was fearless. Really fearless, not the usual false pretense. The deep darkness, undulating waves, the twinkling lights and me. Alive. So close to senselessness yet so fucking alive.

How would you feel if I died tomorrow? Compare that feeling to the feeling you might feel if your fuckwit boss died instead. Not glee, perhaps, but not pain either, is it?

But how would you feel if I died? Be honest with yourself. You don’t have to say it aloud. How do you feel wondering where I’ve been and listlessly browsing the Guardian for something to do - because let’s face it, I take up quite a bit of your time - only to find the story headline may be a girl you know: raped and murdered in cold blood / overdosed on hard drugs / mowed down by a double-decker / leapt in front of a speeding train.

Being alone in this city, I depend on you to make my funeral arrangements. They ask you to identify the body. You should be able to, you know this body fairly well. But do you remember? Perhaps if I’m mangled enough only the smallest detail will count. Do you remember my face enough to see it through the swelling and bruises? What about the location of any of my scars? Do you know that I had two wisdom teeth pulled on one side but not the other just to keep me out of balance?

They ask how you met me and what the nature of our relationship might have been. What do you say, I wonder? How do you explain yourself and us and our secret double-agent lives? Perhaps they ask you to contact my relatives. Can you do it? Call up work to tell them I’m never coming back? Can you tell a mother that her eldest daughter is dead before age thirty? And how do you explain to her just who the hell you are?

Think on that. And then tell me you know nothing of love.

He tears my chest open, rips out my heart and publishes it for all to read. Every word that drips from his fingers is a tear that drips from my eyes, a bead of sweat that forms on my brow, a glossy, lustful trickle that slickens my labia.

He sucks the air straight out of my lungs and breathes into his writing to blow me away. He holds my churning stomach intertwined with his every phrase. His sentences snake long through my body and form knots in my throat, choking me. The force of his telling hollows out my chest.

He structures each piece with the shivering quiver of my thighs. He sets the rhythm to the pulsing blood beat coursing through my veins. He writes electrified signals that shock my every nerve. His every paragraph is an incantation that moves me.

I like being acutely aware of you, of your quiet shifting movements and the rhythm of your breath. I am usually quite fidgety, you see. Most of the time, I require my own personal space and no violations. But not with you. With you, my skin itself becomes desire. I don’t get enough of you and it’s not just a fresh thrill. It’s also a safe comfort, a knowing familiarity, a kissing touch of sense.

I pine to be on you, to straddle you and fit my curves carefully and seamlessly over yours. Feel your warmth, your aura commingled with mine. Press into you so close and breathe you in so deeply. I see it in my mind, I wait for it throughout the day, for the time when I can again nuzzle my face into your neck and sigh contentedly in your arms. In that space I forget everything, I forget who I am and what I’ve done, but mostly I forget to care where I’m going. I get lost and ever so slightly regress.

Because that’s how I feel, so tiny. Like a puckered rosebud that hasn’t bloomed. A shrinking daffodil or something nonsensical that nonetheless warrants nurture. I become a small child, a very young girl again. A tender, cuddly bundle in floppy-eared pajamas who just needs to be held and loved by you.

In our hearts we touch gorgeous, slender lithe fingers lightly together and in our souls, perfect heavenly bodies entwine blithely like they always said we would. Like they always wished they would.

Reality is rarely more cruel and unforgiving, not quite as subtle but endlessly more nuanced. In truth, we don’t fit seamlessly like a palmful of sand in your cupped hand, the way we do when I imagine us. Touches rather clumsy but touching, fumbles rather a foible but sweet. I trip over myself and cling to you for support while you trip over yourself and invariably we end up on the sea floor though staring beyond, into the distant horizon. Amid nervous laughter, trembling extremities, and changes of topic we come back around, eventually, inevitably. Letting the tide gently carry us back around to what’s really on our minds.

In our minds nothing matters except the resonance of the other, resounding pulsing waves crashing onto a naked shore. Our brains almost shut down from excitement and lack of oxygen. Our nerves finally calm and inner peace radiates and materialises through the vastness. For a few fleeting moments in our drowning lives we actually believe that we can know something about the deep and dark and everything that dwells there. We finally know the hollows of these coral reefs intimately.

I would have liked to write a graphically detailed admission of the wonder of our shells, the shedding of our wetsuits, the effortless transition from breathing to knowing, the confident mingling of our scents. But to write such thinly disguised lies would be, not only dishonest and disrespectful, but cruel and unkind to our thoughts. So I don’t really want that at all. I’m resigned to disappear in the seas of our minds, where creatures awful in their beauty swim restless but free.

Somehow it is weird that in a weird way it’s quite wonderful. As much as I always want and need forgiving quietude, I never believe I can disassociate long enough to lose my self. Yet, quite easily and strangely confidently, though not completely without apprehension, I did. And for a minute there? Something disconnected and that other something which is something else took over. What was that, anyway? I can never know for certain but I should like to call upon it again, at will.

I knew I’d stepped outside myself as soon as I stepped beyond. Properly stuffed with caffeine and herbal tranquility, a hideous wreck of barely numb twitch and jitter, sweat-soaked from the sweltering anticipation and desirous of something stronger. Once within bounds, I immediately began shedding clues like layers of clothing. Shaky fingers, those that gave me away at first thought.

But soon those fingers were swept away, lost in a breeze that blew its way off and over that which I cannot bring myself to taint and sully with my rarely fitting words. I blinked tiredness into the bright morning warmth and tried to usher in the day and the sense. But the heat reminded me that I’d forgotten who I was, what I was, and even what I feared I’d be for just about long enough. Just long enough to know. Just long enough to realise there’s something wonderfully weird all about me.

I’m feeding off you, as I know you are me. I feel you, eating away at me every day, piece by piece, morsel by morsel, incisors dig deep in my flesh and further. What’s behind? What’s within? Echoing whispers intimate in my mind. You thirst for wells of knowledge of me the way I’m parched inside of you.

I want to climb right into your mind. I want to set up residence in your nightmares and explore every far-flung corner of your subconscious. I know some of the darkest mainly monochrome. But what about the others? Do you dream in shades of aquatic blues and golden suns? Are things in their place, a place where everything should be?

I have to tread lightly, though. I don’t wish to disturb a single ridged leaf in the shivering windswept, overgrown greens. Death defying to know what it feels like to be you from the inside. I want to ride out the storms in the dark hours of night and float high over clouds in your words on the light hours of dawn.

I want to know what it’s like to see everything through your unique, exacting eye shapes and colours. Invade you so completely that our synapses set off fireworks in the purple blaze and begin to hardwire together, enmeshed.

Driven by a strange desire but I would not allow myself to change you. Come as you are, bury your grace, deep within me.