Bow Bell Tales

[bowbelltales]

Hey You

You are pulling in from Japan as we speak, and I wonder what you have experienced. Will you move there now? I think about the dopamine hits and the fact that I am still anchored to you. Do you feel it too? I am not easy, but at least I am transparent on the dance floor. You noticed in Copenhagen. Through it all, you got my imagination going. I don’t know what is actually you and what is a…

[bowbelltales]

Tom Ford Sunnies

He approaches me in the street. I’ve just bought soda, and as I walk toward him I already know the shape of what’s about to happen. I keep my face averted, like that might interfere with it. It doesn’t. “You look amazing,” he says. “I would like to get to know you.” I notice his chiselled outline, biceps under a tight T-shirt, cheekbones sharp enough to look designed. Skin that looks…

[bowbelltales]

Friday Something

My drink is waiting at the bar. I pick it up when I get back, along with a bowl of nuts I didn’t order. In a place like this, they need my type of clientele, and there is hope that those nuts will ensure my return. They won’t. I think about how easy it is to project something different from where you are right now. It is enough to be Vogue: silks and lace, all in beige, a neckline reaching…

[bowbelltales]

Wicked Game (Aftermath)

My smile is a scar. I am proud of it. Those hearts broken. My own disheveling in the face of your death. I’m still here though. Remembrance is always a shadow as I put one foot in front of the other towards where I am going. I require no validation from the world, but I still have this need to spill my words, and they are many. Give me a keyboard and I will not stop. Some people post…

[bowbelltales]

Something Else

You are a presence, a style icon, a fashionista, he says to me. I just stare at him; this is not what I want to hear. I am just a girl, standing in front of a boy etc. (You know the drill.) No words leave my mouth and also no smile. He notices his mistake too late, and I care about it. If I wanted superficial compliments, I would go to a bar, not visit his mausoleum of a flat in a town I…

[bowbelltales]

The Exit Line

I notice the back of your bald head through the restaurant window. It takes me a moment to place it. You are never on time. Yet here you are. It’s due day. I smile to myself when I see you remain outside. The big VIP man, always careful not to call the shots. It is so like you I almost enjoy it. Almost. Eventually, I go out to fetch you. At the table, I keep the conversation moving. It is…

[bowbelltales]

Walking Distance

I am on a Bumble date and it’s not going well. His jacket looks like money just like I do, but that is where the similarities end. He is definitely not a nicotine addict, and he has his shit together. Maybe that is why I feel such a chill. The perfection irritates me at a fundamental level. I laugh at his jokes; they are kosher, of course, and I smile demurely where I am supposed to, but behind…

[bowbelltales]

What Remains

You made it easy for me in the end. You choked everything, and when I tried to log on, I couldn’t. I am meeting the boss on Monday, but it makes no difference; I am vanished. In the end, I dreaded it. In the end, it was inevitable. All those emails wishing me luck along the way. All those Slack messages trying to come up with solutions to something that had none. Now someone else must decipher…

[bowbelltales]

You Did Not Just Arrive

I will land. It will take a while – too many goodbyes, too many chapters closing at once. I am a bit deflated. I still see your face when I walk down the street, and it is never you. They are always too short or too tall or too something else. You didn’t just arrive; something shifted. I picture you with those crows, and I realise you woke me up. That is why you linger. A mirror. A catalyst.…

[bowbelltales]

Dot

Too many endings these past few months. I have been exhausted for weeks, but I don’t break until my final call. It’s unexpected that it happens then. Her voice is small, almost girlish, but I vividly remember how she would enter attack mode daily and how I would forever try to manage that flood of emails coming in every morning. I remember late Friday nights with my coder and the one with the…

[bowbelltales]

White Linnen

Morality – why do we care? Doing the right thing – does it matter? I watch your never-ending suit walk down the corridor (it’s not even Hugo Boss; it doesn’t even encompass charm). I know whatever you are feeling is as fleeting as a heart-shaped ice cube melting under the May sun. You ask me to lunch after I have annoyed you with the fact that I may end up with power. I say yes, thinking I could…

[bowbelltales]

After the Burn

“Your life is cinematic,” she says with a smile. Well, yes, thank you. I could do with a little less cinema for a while. Living life at a high intensity level takes its toll. I can feel the strain in my bones. I still miss you. Your stories flash by on my burner phone (the app is still deleted on the one I carry with me) – always showing something I hold dear, but you stay silent. I suppose…

[bowbelltales]

Human

You are at the corner of the bar. Your hair pulled back into a top knot, those dark eyes and that dark beard in place. You are tanned now, but the rest of you looks the same. Enough to stop traffic. Yet that gaze of yours is there, that haunted focus I used to notice even before things went pear-shaped. We stayed indoors for the first three months. I didn’t find it to be an anomaly. Things…

[bowbelltales]

My Coder

The war is over. The deal is done. It’s not my best deal, but it’s time for a new chapter. I am tired of lawyer talk, so I signed and sealed it. Then I watch his face as I enter the virtual call; he is apprehensive, on edge. The man in charge – the last time we met like this I made sure it wasn’t pretty, but now all I feel is mercy. So I spell it out with that warmth that is my signature, and…

[bowbelltales]

Copenhagen

I finally pull your shirt down from its hanger and it still smells like you, kind of earthy, poignant but sweet. I bury my face in the wine-coloured cotton – I should really send it to you, but I won’t. I dumped you despite the fact that I loved you, so I will keep your shirt as a token. It hasn’t been easy. The persistent silence. The fact that you have disappeared. But I will live though…

[bowbelltales]

Peripheral Self

I look at my body. It’s there as usual. I still don’t understand the excitement, the focus. He asks me: “do you know how desirable you are?” “I don’t look at myself this way,” I respond. Because I don’t. Then he talks about my pretty face, my sweet smile, my hands. I look at my face and it’s the same as when I was a young girl. Nothing has changed. The same high cheekbones (I know if I could…

[bowbelltales]

За жизнь

“I might come back single, you know,” she says. Her eyes stay fixed on her beer, avoiding my gaze (hidden behind sunglasses for the moment  – they’ve been at my eye with the scalpel again). The comment throws me. So random, so unexpected. Yet one thought arrives immediately, with force: maybe I did something right when I let you go. In the end, are we made for twosomes, or simply too afraid to…