I've always thought toys can feel pain. I've known perfectly well that they are inanimate since I was barely able to walk. But in some strange way I'd always feel like if I was to hit them they would hurt. If I was to treat them cruelly they'd suffer. Now that I grew up, I don't think toys can feel pain. I know they do. Being one helped me learn a lot.
He'd always tell me "You're not like those hollow-headed, shallow dolls.". From the way he said it, I knew well I, too, was a doll; just a different kind. I didn't mind. Wasn't I his doll, after all? Did I ring empty when he hit me? Did he hold my hand or theirs? Who cares, then?
Sometimes he'd say "It's so rare and delicate, what we have.". His words would ring blue and clear. The sound would carve an image in my head: An immense, cast crystalline statue. Rare and delicate. Smoother than ice, warmer than a hearth. Realistic details carved with gossamers of sunlight. Balanced on tiptoe. See-through. Just like me. Just like what we had. He'd firm the hold on my hand, and we'd go on. We'd watch the endless parade of hollow dolls in their meaningless façade. Then the autumn would come, and the leaves would stick wet to pavements, and drains in us would clog. Then winter spring summer rain. We'd drink wine or swallow mouthfuls of sand just for a change. Dancing in crystalline on flat-toed ballerina slippers. Living the life of a crystalline doll in a crystalline love. Full and heavy, but so delicate. So fragile. We'd cry till our eyes went maroon. Collecting little knick-knack from surprise eggs on the kitchen shelf. Finding the other one had thrown up and passed out on a roll of toilet paper. Pasting the love letters deep in our membranes. Those letters, cut dead from the mind of the loved one, yet capable of scarring to bleed eternally. Letters which wounded so that the foreign existance would creep and settle into your soul forever more. Letters that came from three streets down just when you thought you were so close to each other. We'd bleed in love.
We could laugh all the same. We would hold hands and sit on a bench and shoot the dolls and the stars. If any of you had seen a meteor shower once upon a time, it's either one of the ones we made or there was another two bodies and souls on this planet who were as within each other as we were. Dolls wore red red ribbons after we shoot them. Stars shone cobalt and gave themselves in to his hands. He'd place the stars he caught between my eyes. They'd burn their way down, down, deep into where I kept him. Stars shone. Crystalline shone. Once he gave me this plastic ring with a blue star on it. I couldn't wear it because i was afraid it would melt into my flesh. I kept it on the kitchen shelf, among the knick-knacks. When cooking, or when I was crying with my head against the fridge, a substitute for him along with the him in me when his shoulder was out of my reach, looking at it always gave me fields and fields of sunflowers inside my head, my apartment, my world. The day he sent knick-knacks flying to hundred different directions with the back of his hand, the ring got lost. I've never found it. It was the last thing he gave me, and I don't think it's unappropriate to say I've never found him again, either. I was not aware of it that moment. I was not aware that the him in me had first died and then started packing to leave. I wasn't aware he was packing the drops of laughter, sigh, tear and blood. Packing the butterflies with razor-sharp steel wings. Packing the red funeral ribbons for dolls. Packing the chrome and sweet tooth saved for a wintry time. Packing the flowers that came from the snowy pastures of Hell. Packing the stripes and stones we threw once in a while. Packing the shine and cobalt of the stars that burnt their homes into me. He left me some darkness to play with, but I was not aware of what he left, because the fields of sunflowers everywhere around me were still turning their faces to sun. I was not aware of anything until two days after I read in a humour magazine that the opposite of love was not hate, it was lie. Until then I thought this was going to go on for the length of time, as it always was. As it always had been. Going on and on for the length of time.
I was on the bus when I noticed he did not call me all the past day and up until then that day. I was looking at my umbrella. How the raindrops magnified the texture of the synthethic fabric. A thread a bit thicker than nothing went under and over the ones like itself. Dull colours of the day smudged themselves to the windows of the bus. Smeared against the glass, unwilling early-spring greens washed away in motion blur. I took out my cellular and called him.The number I had dialed could not be reached at that moment. I looked at my fingernails and saw I was losing the cobalt glow and translucency. I dialed the number again. Agitation rose from my stomach like spew and filled my mouth, waiting to be spilled to the other end of the line. Could not be reached at the moment. I sent the sour wave of unpleasant feeling back down to whence it came. I sat back. Tried to relax a little. Then I tried to reach him through the line we spared for each other and nobody else but each other. In my mind I yelled him "Where are you?". And before anything could carry, I felt the line, always fully transparent to enable us to see each other without anything hidden, getting opaque. I felt a faint glow of cobalt stardust instead of strong bright light and empty places of the stars he took away. A cold, sickly sweat broke all over my skin. I doubled up onto myself and barfed nothing under the seat. I got off the bus and ran the remaining two stops to home. Wind froze the sweat on my skin and locked the worry inside me. I rushed to the building, up the stairs, into the flat. The walls were bleeding. I was seeing them redder than red. Blue was oozing away from my sight. The cobalt was draining away from me. Outside light could find no way into me because i was going rapidly opaque. I grabbed the spare keys to his house he left me and ran three streets down. Birds tangled in my hair and died. Fluttering like black flags. Like the long black skirt of Lady Death. By the time I tore his housedoor open and found the place empty, the crystalline was milky and dull and death-cold. I collapsed onto his bed, watching the stars escaped from me dance on the ceiling. World swallowed the liquid black and black worked its way through the world's veins.
In a point on the length of the time, something chimed. In the darkness of the world's bowels, a pair of eyes opened. It took a while to understand they were mine. My cellular was buzzing on the floor. I answered.
It was him. The milk in the crystalline suddenly pulled itself back.
"Where have you been all day long?" said I.
But it was still dull. The letters in me started to bleed.
"Well, not anywhere really. Around. Nowhere, actually." said he. My blood cells cried "Liar!". He was right inside me all the day. On my left side, somewhere below my ribs, to be particular.
"What did you do?" said I.
"Um, just about nothing." said he. My blood cells cried "Liar!". He was hiding, hiding, hiding. Hiding from me.
"Where are you now?" said I.
"At home. Where are you?" said he. I cried "Liar!". Then I went silent as he did. I chucked the phone down the window and got out of his house. The crystalline had gone all black.
"A second chance..." he had begged. "Second and the last...". Dull black crystalline weighed so much on my heart that I just had to give it to him. He invited me not to his house, tried not to get invited to mine. He offered neutral grounds. Under the sky full of stars unmoving, I was going towards the location. I was going to and asunder him. My hair fluttering like black flags. My skirt fluttering like the long black skirt of Lady Death. The dying crystalline doll in dying crystalline love tiptoed on. Dabs of her steps tinkered gently on pavement. Tlink-tlink-tlink. Tlinkalink-kalink-tlink. She balleted towards the narrow noisy place which stank of cigarettes, perspired alcohol and hollow human bodies. She squeezed the alcoholic chatters that crowded the place to sides while going in. Her flat-toed slippers shattered on every step she climbed to the second floor. The splinters from her slippers stung into my eyes and I started to cry. Last puffs of cobalt stardust evaporated from last drops of tears he forgot in the darkest corner while he was packing. Her glass feet merging into mine, her glass lips merging into mine, I entered the room. There he was, sitting in the shadiest corner with his back to me. With his glass of beer.
With her painted glassy eyes...
...with her overblushed cheeks...
...with her fancy useless rags...
...with her long ornamental legs which served for no real trudge...
...with her hair tufted and dyed colorful on her hollow head...
...there sat a hollow-headed shallow doll.
A million voices in my head sat silent and screamed out names. An unnamed something to name all things went to pieces inside me.
And all the crystalline fell apart a in a million pieces.
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