it just so happens, that i’m sitting on my friend’s couch.
the good, plush couch of a good, dear friend.
we have eaten too much surely. i came to meet their newborn, for the very first time. i brought a lot of gifts. we are are adults now, and we can indulge. Â
we are adults now, and we can’t meet so often. i was so happy to come, but i was anxious too, about the gifts, about the passing of time, about the love we brew on our own when we are apart.
all fine. all well-received.
i am sitting on my good friend’s couch. i accept another cup of coffee. the chocolate box is nearly empty. it’s raining, but no matter.
the whole world is right here.
the eldest is telling us a story, the baby is cooing in my friend’s arm. i’ll have drawings to pack when it’s time to go. i fold a few paper cranes. we abandon another game. i am overwhelmed in the most mundane way – how perfect life is in this very moment, how bright and full, how generous. another slice of cake. the rain goes on and on.
I have no word to put on it. I cannot say it, I cannot even think it. I don’t know.
I am in a lesbian bar, surrounded by lesbian women. They don’t know about me. I don’t know either. But I sit with them and they laugh with me, and I understand them. Their words, their jokes, their feelings. They say “us, lesbians”. They think I am one of them. If they think that, then it might… I might… maybe. Right? If they agree, then maybe I could. Maybe I can.
How hard it is to come out to yourself. To give the verdict, to admit, to confess.
I am asked about my gender. Why? Is there a word they are expecting? I have none. It doesn’t mean anything. That I changed the name I go by, that I changed the way I look, that I never correct anyone. They say the word for me. I am neither, I am both. Is that what they understood? Is that what I have been showing? If it is, then maybe…
How hard it is to come out to yourself. It will be real if I say it. It will be real, if I say it.
There is no word for it. I simply have no interest in this, with anyone, ever. It has been years. It will be years more, it will be forever, yet the word, it’s not for me. I am not. I do not know. “You are ace, aren’t you?” Aren’t I? Am I? Sure I fit the definition, sure I share all their experiences and feelings, but it doesn’t mean, it doesn’t mean…
How hard it is to come out to yourself.
I am scared. I cannot say. I’ll let you. If you say so, if you see it, if you recognize me, put the word in my mouth. The mirror stays silent when I need it to talk, I will be in your eyes before I am in mine. If you accept it, then maybe. Maybe.
You are a haunted house, and you’re lonely. You’ve become self conscious because every time you try to engage with visiting humans, they run away in fear. But a party of humans has just arrived, and you realise one of them is intent on killing the rest.
The first time was so long ago, we don’t remember it clearly. There was a mother and a father, and two daughters and a son. There were a lot of screams, pain too, and one day the mother was away and there was rage, and a knife, and blood. The father walked out, and the children?
The children, they couldn’t leave, and so they lingered, they stayed right here, in the walls, the lights, the creaking floor, and eventually, they became…
What did they become? We don’t remember. It’s been so long.
It’s lonely here. We tried to make friends but we can’t talk anymore, and it’s not easy to make friends when you can’t talk. We can blink – the light flickers. We can clap – the doors slap shut. We can even whine and whisper a little – the wood is old.
But we can’t talk and no one understands us. One after the other, they come happy and leave screaming, they get scared. Fewer and fewer have come over the years.
Haunted, they say.
What is haunted? We don’t know. Are we? We didn’t notice anything.
We always try to keep quiet at first, to be gentle, so the newcomers know we are not a threat, so they don’t get scared away. But it never works. We wait longer and longer each time, because maybe if they like it here then they will try to listen, try to understand. It only makes it harder when they leave anyway, because we have known them for so long and they don’t want to stay, they never want to stay.
This is the longest we have been empty. Children come from time to time, to play at being scared, but they are quick to get out. It’s not so bad. Children should be able to leave.
It is lonely here, but a new family is coming. A father, a mother, two daughters and a son.
We decide not to do anything at all.
If we don’t try to be friends, then they won’t leave. They will stay here, they will be happy, and we can watch and it will be enough. It will be enough.
Except there is something wrong. There is something wrong, it never happened before. There is something wrong with the father.
It is immediately clear. How do we know? How? How do we understand so well his cold eyes, his rough hands, his harsh words? How do we understand so well the daughter who is always angry and rebellious, who keeps talking back despite the slaps, who keeps sneaking out and drinking and getting into fights at school? How do we understand so well the daughter who is mellow and agreeable, who says yes to everything, who is so quiet and so small, folded over herself, who talks almost as little as we do? And the son who is focused on his schoolwork only, whose only goal is to have the best possible grades and go to the best possible school as far away from us as possible, how do we get them? Why?
This is the first time we want someone to leave.
If he stays, if they stay like this… the father has to leave. We have to make him leave, or he will be the only one left, with blood, and a knife, and we will be more and that is not what we want, it is not.
We said we would stay silent but we can’t, we have to do something. It won’t happen, it won’t happen. It won’t happen again.
We can clap – we can slam the door when the man tries to be quiet, tries to catch the children off guard when they are doing something he doesn’t like. Listening to music, scrolling on their phone, reading a magazine, anything goes. We slam the door, he is irritated but the daughters are warned, the son is safe.
They are not scared of us then.
We can blink – the lights go off when he is stalking menacingly to one or the other, when he is enraged and reaches out to an arm, a face, a neck. They make their escape as he grapples blindly, and they are safe.
And they are not scared of us. The man is starting to be, but the children walk with a hand running on the walls, playful, tender.
We can whine, or not. The floorboards crack loudly under the man’s heavy steps, a warning to his every move, but it stays quiet and still when the children pad from one room to another, when they come back too late and leave too early. They make just a whisper in front of the room of the second daughter, when the first daughter tries to sneak out to drink again. The second goes out, she stops the first, she takes her into her room, and they are safe.
But it is not enough, and so instead of getting quieter, calmer, we get louder, we get bolder.
The man finds some doors locked, though the keys have been lost long ago. He thinks the water is always cold, that the heater is always broken, that the stairs try to trip him, the door tries to hit him. He gets scared.
This time, it is a good thing. He says he wants to leave and the others ask why, they say they like it here.
They say they like it here!
The man gets violent against us. He punches and kicks the walls, he screams and insults us, throws objects at us. When they are the children’s or the mother’s, they hit us without breaking, roll away safely. When they are his, they shatter and fall apart and the pieces cut and smack him. The pain doesn’t matter, we can bear it, it’s worth enduring. He stomps and yells, he is enraged. He is afraid.
It is still not enough though, one day when he comes back home with a smell we know so well, a darkness in his eyes we know so well, a rage we know so well. The mother is hard at work, the children are sound asleep.
There is power in rage. In his, but in ours too.
We throw the children out of bed – upturn the frame, rattle the floorboards, throw the windows open and blow through the rooms until they are stumbling in the corridor. They are confused and half asleep, but they are not scared, not scared. They trust us.
We push them out, through the back door, lock them outside and lock the man in. He will stay trapped in here with us. He will not do them harm.
Not them, but…
Enraged, frantic, he tears through us, every corner, every room but the children are not there and he is trapped, and so mindless with fury and fear, he turns against us.
He grabs the firelighter. We know what it could do, but should we stop him? At least the children will be safe. At least he won't take a knife.
It will hurt when he lights up the curtains, the sheets, it will hurt when the flames go up the walls and to the roof, but we have hurt before. The children are not scared – it is worth it.
Except it’s another pain that comes first. The backdoor bursts open – we forgot to keep an eye on it. The children barge in. We try to stop them, they can’t come in, it’s not safe, but they do, they come in and we don’t want to hurt them, so we let them through.
They jump on the man.
“Leave the house alone,” they say.
Leave the house alone, they say!
They have come back to protect us.
And so, we lead them to the basement.
The door was condemned, but we can easily open it. After all, this is where we are. The father came out, but the children, never.
This time, the children will come out, and the father will stay. He won’t leave, after all. He will never leave.
They push him down the stairs. The door shuts back, disappears again behind the wallpaper, locks back without the key.
After all this time, we are famished. But we are also merciful – they don’t hear his screams.
They catch their breath next to the door that is no longer there, the two daughters and the son, they fall into each other’s arms, they cry, and they lean against the door and they say “thank you”.
Thank you, thank you.
They thank us.
We clap and blink and whine and they are not scared. They laugh at the flickering lights, at the slamming doors, at the creaking floor. They are not scared.
We have made friends, haven’t we?
In the morning, the mother is surprised and a little worried not to find the father anywhere at home. A little worried, but not that much, especially when she has checked the three bedrooms and all three children are sleeping soundly, safe and unharmed. We have tidied up the house together, we have put everything back into place. They have fixed the backdoor with a soft apology. We don’t think anyone ever apologized to us before.
After a while, the mother has to call the police. They come, they search and probe. We don’t like them at all – they have come before and there are always disrespectful and rough, always careless. But they won’t find a thing. We have hidden it all, they will never find the door, they will never find us, and not the father either. They leave empty-handed, say they will keep looking.
They can look all they want.
The mother doesn’t ask, she doesn’t say anything. But we wonder what she knows, because she is not scared either. And they stay. They stay here with us, they see the lights and hear the doors and feel the floor and the walls and still they stay. They see, hear, feel us. They understand us.
We have made friends, haven’t we? It is very nice.
I dreamed we met
by chance.
I was so happy
I could finally hug you.
There was nothing amiss
in that dream
nothing out of place, like there is sometimes
nothing to warn me.
You were smiling softly
You didn’t let go.
I talked, and talked,
ten years!
A lifetime.
You hadn’t changed at all
You didn’t say a thing
Even in a dream,
I couldn’t dream you.
Where are you my friend?
How is your life?
What do you do?
– “You didn’t recognize me.”
I walk around this grief-stricken house,
Haunted, haunted by her fading presence.
The silence, the anguish,
The tears bursting at once,
The laugh that stifles out
Because you remember
This is no laughing matter
This is no laughing matter.
And the timer has just begun
Time of death – starting point.
From now on this is a life
She doesn’t live, she doesn’t own.
The highest point of the curve,
The lifetime ratio,
“Moments I think about her”
“Moments I manage to let go”.
And right now it seems impossible
That the bottom line will ever leave zero
But one day you'll see, time will have passed
You'll wake up thinking of something else
Just for a second, for a more than nothing
Starting point – when you resume living.
gamechangershow
tangentwithtanner
dailybridgerton
vaporwave
prguitarman
theartofmadeline
origamiaround
ellievsbear