A Handful of Stars

Denise: storyteller, poet, cynic, caffeine addict and lover of words. I am drunk on misery. I own my sadness, and my sadness owns me. This is why I write.

[skin-origami]

bandages

One hand twitches. A short spasm of movement. An invisible string tugging at the pinky and the ring finger. An eternity of loneliness unmasked with the slimmest slip of control. No one sees. No one ever sees. Just like that, it returns to normal. Just one hand. Just another hand, lying palm down on the soft grass. Just a normal appendage attached to an arm, which remains unmoving. The world is unmoving for the moment, except for the clouds. The clouds don’t care about the hand.

The other hand is nearby, long-fingered and alone, lying beside its owner. The owner is watching the clouds, too, even though they don’t care. The owner does not notice the twitching. The hand is utterly still, perfectly controlled. There will be no slips from this one. Many a hand has been tugged by invisible strings towards this hand, and always, always the strings snap and all goes back to normal. Yet this one does not see. This one never sees.

The hand that twitched senses this and retreats, its palm stroking the grass as it decides to stay closer to its owner’s thigh. Safer here. Farther from the untouchable one. The owner of the cowardly hand watches the sky change colors, the clouds fleeting in their touch, the wind carrying their images onward, into some distant future where these hands will most likely be nowhere near each other.

The other hand does not sense this and presses hard against the ground as its owner sits up, eyes masked. Fully controlled. No slips. Long-fingered and alone, this hand leaves the grass, flying higher and higher while the owner stands, stumbling a little, then straightening into a tall figure. This is the graceless grace of one used to leaving.

The hand that twitched does the same, only slower. Its owner is firm-footed, and the slowness that often comes with quiet pain guarantees that there is no stumbling.  If there is hesitation, if there is falling, it is somewhere inside, where no one will see. The owner finally stands beside the other one, with the visage of someone whose hand never twitched. This is the graceful surrender of one used to being left.

[skin-origami]

before all the praying i did not do

my fading is the slow kind. it's an old man obsessed with absence and often drunk on distance. silences swirl in his bottles and jars, a collection of fireflies he intends to give to his dead grandchildren.

my fading has a life of its own, watching sunsets, pausing in in the middle of streets to watch the colors slice the sky open. its smiles hang limp like telephone wires on its face. words are always stuck in the tangle of lips and they never escape and they form nests there, lay eggs that will break into more words, will learn and unlearn flight, will name the empty air their sun, will imitate planets and dead rocks.

my fading takes time. it takes time by the hand and dances to the absence of music, or to absences in general. it stares out at the fields and forgets to take pictures and falls asleep to the lullaby of radio static. it writes poetry on things thrown away and forgotten, my fading tries to undo itself sometimes, on good days. good days are living days. good days take time.

[skin-origami]

don’t chase after people in airports

Sometimes I find myself sitting in a corner at the bottom of my lungs. They’re my little airports. I am sitting on an uncomfortable bench beside a homeless man who smells like smoke and above is the endless tunnel that is the sky, my throat.

I watch the planes land and leave, lifted by the steady breaths of breaths. I think air is magic and this is why I am sitting here watching the dome of the horizon as it shrinks and swells with every arrival and every departure. The homeless man beside me is a bonfire, building pillars of smoke from his mouth. His cigarette. His last hope.

I wonder if people in airports ever feel like they’re trapped in their own lungs, if watching the planes leave and come back gives them hope or if it just makes them want to get out of the damn place and never come back. We humans, after all, are far less durable than airplanes.

I watch the sky crumple as you leave. I watch the sky stretch as you come back. I want to grab the homeless man’s cigarette, but I don’t smoke, and even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to build anything. Not with you. I might have told you that in one of the conversations we had when we felt equally alone in this crowded world and filled the silences in each other’s chests with things we usually have a hard time finding. Like honesty. Bravery. The possibility of staying. The vague hope of a possibility of staying.

I told you about my ghosts, and you introduced me to the dusk inside your head. I told you I feel more comfortable watching planes leave than waiting for them to come back. You told me to just get on the next flight.

You got on the next flight and I didn’t. I am filled with air but it doesn’t feel like magic. This is the closest I have ever come to drowning. I want to leave, too. I want to leave.

[skin-origami]

nothing dies. nothing dies.

my lungs ache for pins

puncture the twin balloon seeds

let it all out

let it all out

there is no need

for their stuttering verses right now

let it all out

in one great flood

of breath and prose

in one great gout

of honest sentences

strung clumsily together

by nothing but space

the vast

eternal

space

let it all move

out

into the ever setting sun

of all the strangers

I have created stories for.

it goes on and on and

out

into the distance

between my fingertips

and his

his

because i.

and he.

well.

he taught me

how to measure distance in moments.

let it burn with need

watch the flames

raze me from the inside.

i just sit in the corner

where two of my veins meet

feel the life brush against me

hear it scream and move

out

into the streets

rife with everyone else

i want to tell them

i am a poem and

i walk amongst you and

you should know this and

you should hear this and

you are all poems and

i walk amongst you and

i hear you.

right now

i can hear all of you.

[skin-origami]

where i am with you

what is the word for wanting something so badly you run away screaming at the mere sight of it? what is the word for asking yourself why and why and why and why does anyone dare want anything when they know they can't get it? what is the word want? what do the words i want you again mean? what does again mean? what is the word for returning to someplace you have never been in before? what is returning? what is a place? what is the word for feeling safe with the same thing that sent you running without looking back? what does safe mean? what does running without looking back mean? what is looking back? what is back? what is the word for home when it keeps moving but you will always find your way back to it no matter how long you've been lost? what is home? why does it move? what is lost? why do we lose? what do we lose? why do we want? what is the word for not alone not alone not alone not alone? what does not alone mean? what does alone mean? what is the word for staying when your legs are singing flight, when your feet want to be hearts beating, beating against the ground, when your lungs are screaming for stars but there is a constellation where you stay, points of light joining bone and breath and want, what is the word for want, for cracking open at the edges and trying to shove all your rot back inside for fear of being seen, and failing, and staying, what is the word for staying? what does rot mean? what is inside? why does inside exist? why do we rot? why do we rot? why do we rot and stay?

[skin-origami]

i made you maps like love letters

i write poems to your back while i watch you leave and it hurts me everytime i tell you that i can take it i can take it but don't worry, baby, i have been broken by worse this will not cripple me.

i am the history of earthquakes you have made across my body and you cannot take it away with you while you leave.

while you leave, i will stay back. you never had the ability to break my heart, darling, because i don't let that happen anymore. but you did break my ankles and i cannot move from this spot and i am still standing here doomed to stay doomed to wait but don't worry i can take care of myself.

it's just that my memory of you tastes like this: like a coin landing on its side, making you think, for the shortest moment, that the world is capable of being fair, but then it trembles and falls on the wrong side - it was like that.

it was like that except i pushed the coin to make it fall on the wrong side because it's not the world that teems with injustice, it's us it's us who are the sick ones.

we are the marks we make on each other's skin - bruises, hickeys, nail scratches, lipstick and the invisible dents in our sides from too much laughing or too much holding and none of these are permanent we are not permanent this poem is not permanent.

the longer i write the more i learn to accept that you make me feel like this

you make me feel like this and i don't need anything else and maybe i'm selfish for saying this but this is how i let you see me this is all of my desires as i know them and you are not all of them.

you were never my gravity.

this is how i try to let you go.

you were that line from that poem. i will never speak you out loud.

but someday, years and years from now long after people have stopped mentioning you, i will be in the middle of some menial task and for no reason for no reason at all i will suddenly stop moving.

the universe will skid gently into a halt.

i will think of you at the nudge of the galaxies and perhaps by that time i no longer remember the details of your face or the sound of your voice.

but something inside me will recognize you.

that line. that poem.

and the way my breath hitches at my throat will tell me -

him.

ah, yes, him.

you knew him.

[wordsnquotes]

I am building a stairway to the stars. I have the authority to take the whole of mankind up there with me. That is why I write.

Bessie Head (via wordsnquotes)

[skin-origami]

split ends

Eyes are terrifying.

Especially when you are dancing your way down the steps and their precarious edges, the ones that will let you fall. Watch your feet, your knees, their little tricks. You can feel yourself vanishing.

His eyes hold you there.

He will let you leave, but in a moment, just a moment, please, while you can still look at him, while he still sees the ghost of your downfall drunk and weeping beneath white and brown sheets. The very air between you is a fragile pulse, alive with sadness.

When he looks at you, you can tell he knows your eyes look like something Shakespeare would write. Maybe he’s a playwright, this boy, and the only end he understands is your face, darling, why does your face look like a rout, a soldier running for cover while bullets carve your spine into a willow bough. He traces the shape of your back with something not quite longing, yet it grabs you anyway.

In many other ways, he is clueless. So many hours of waiting, of cultivating the kind of infernal patience that sometimes sounds like one long scream after another. He doesn’t know that this is just a game to see who can leave first. He doesn’t know how many times he has won.

He can look into your eyes all he wants. You can keep on spinning and falling. Neither of you will find what you’re looking for.

[paper-anatomy]

“how to use panels, by kubo tite”

#poetry #whatileavebehind

[skin-origami]

while they are packing

Really? That's it? Mild discomfort? No locked airways, no boulder in the folds of your membranes, no explosions? No shattering skies, no crumbling tunnels of veins, no acid? At all? Not even a little? Is this the sum of your scars? Your agony? Why so quiet? No thunder, no screeching whirlwind, no sudden jolt of pain? What's with the silence? What's with the nothing? Where is the cackle of stardust? The shout of meteor showers? Where is the encroaching fire, the devourer, the gnashing teeth and violence? What? Where? Come on. Be something. Be a clattering scrap of metal, or a jagged shard of a mirror, or a pulp of crushed flower petals. Be a thousand fissures on your own collapsing breaths, a thousand fading lights, a thousand motes of shadow for the blind, the wary, the cowards. Like you. Like all of you. Be something. Please. Something other than this, this cave, this trove of leaves, these echoing footsteps. Something other than dying crumbs of the foulness that is your surface, the whining door, closed, closed, we are closed, come back some other time, when my bones are brittle, brittle as an old rock, the most fragile of all words, unwoven by the gentlest touch. Is there more? Is there? Or are we all layers of nothing but the void of the galaxy, or the small speck of emptiness allotted to each individual suffering that remains at the bottom of a wine bottle, swirling in eddies of searchers searching for a way out, a way in, a way to keep everything else out lest the gaping oblivion feel threatened by the weaponry of the softest knocks, the softest smiles, the liars the liars the liars we are all a heap of liars and where is the earthquake? And you are a dozen stars shaking remnants of a dream, a dream, yes, because dreams are nice, dreams are distant as the sky and we don't need to think of the possibility that they might come crashing down and we will be powerless and why were we made to dream? Ask somebody, ask God if he's there, if he's the listening type. So what do we do, then, with these marble bodies and hearthfire breaths and slave hearts, and now what do we do when it turns out there is no human inside, just pure yearning or desperation or fear or spite or a flickering step forward or kill me, please, please, please or I don't want to die I don't want to die I don't want to die please but who listens to dead shells, anyway? If there is a god, he has better things to do.

[skin-origami]

10 responses to the sentence “forget them; there are plenty of other fish in the sea”

1. The leaving of one means the potential leaving of all the others. How are they different?

2. But yes, they are different. This one is wildfire and berries, and I feel like the others will just be incidental sparks and bean pods.

3. I don’t forget. Everyone leaves a reminder: a photograph, a favorite song, crumpled movie tickets, messages in the dark.

4. I can’t forget. This one did not leave a mere reminder; this one left maps and scars and the railroad tracks of fingers on my spine, a memory of the mouth, a piece of the museums that are our bodies.

5. Think of a revolving door.

6. Keep thinking of a revolving door because this is its purpose: to show you a way out while you’re still inside, telling you this is how it should be, but once you’re outside, it will keep spinning, telling you there is a way back in and it is just as beautiful and painful as you left it. Your lungs will go before you can make the decision, but it does not know how revolving doors work and they will shred this organ ruthlessly until all that remains are tatters of your breaths and there are not many.

7. It hurts to breathe without lungs.

8. What if I am the fish? Because I am, and even if I don’t believe it, it is highly likely that this is what I will end up becoming: one among the many, depthless beneath the mask, just another one, just another dream, and dreams are nice, but they are very rarely real.

9. I know I am the fish, and this one is sand and trees, and this one will never know because I once saw how beautiful his hands were and called them fins to his face and he believed me because I have always been the better liar here, but I am not lying now, this one is crashing waves and saltwater in the middle of the night, and he will never know because I can’t tell him, how can I, when I can’t even tell myself because I am always the one who says nothing, nothing, I never told him any of this, this one is fishing rod and sunsets, and I am a reflection of the shadows I am afraid of becoming, I am muted light and dusk, I am light as a feather, weightless as bird bones but this one is hook, line, sinker.

10. I sink.

[skin-origami]

on not bringing pens to school

Love lightly, said the exit signs. As if they even know what they are talking about. They are there to facilitate departures, to talk to the soles of our feet, to remind our knees that we need them for walking, so move, joints, move like a well-oiled wheel and do not creak in protest, you are young and broken but not dysfunctional. Watch your steps, said the streetlights, as if they understand what it’s like to be given the ability to leave when all you want is a pair of bloated lungs filled with air and don’t go, baby, nobody wants you to go, but what you have is a pair of legs packed with muscle and let’s go, let’s just go, nobody wants you here, let’s just—

Lightly, I said! The neon signs flicker in annoyance, as if this is how they remind us that we are not stationary, we are not like them, we do not die from non-necessity, we shrivel into bird bones, light enough to fly without being noticed. We just need feathers and a sun. Even a small one will do. We like shiny things, don’t we, just enough to lose our way for them, but not enough to hold their shadows. Lightly, I told you. The pavement sounds smug and you feel like you’re the one being stepped on. How does that even happen? Why do we hurt like this, like non-flight or non-stay or—

Forget it, said the moon. This is useless, it said, as if it has the foggiest idea how loudly our ribs clatter when we are afraid of the only choices available to us. Silly, beautiful things, thinking they are metaphors for our suffering. None of them can get it right, ever, they are only true once, the first time you hear inanimate objects tell you that you are the saddest person in the world with the saddest gait and the saddest eyes, the first time you listen to the wind and hear voices spelling your name like madness, the first time you have to look twice at your shadow to make sure it is yours and not your poet’s ghost, god, that first time you break down crying as soon as you close the door behind you because you are sure you can’t take a single fucking step farther than this, you have used up all your miles in the race between you and insanity, oh god, please, you don’t even believe in a god, what the fuck—

Gently now, gently. I think that’s the piano speaking, as if it can tell you want to break something. Like a piano. Or yourself. Well, heed the instrument, it’s more relaxing than listening to your heartbeats fluctuate like a pendulum, like a philosopher or that goddamn cat in an unopened box, alive, dead, alive, dead, alive, dead dead dead dead but you don’t want to die—

Kindly, please, murmurs the rocking chair, as if it understands this repetitive dance. It is kind of soothing to move back and forth, like waving a hand, or nodding, or shaking your hips to music you hate, or fucking. You need a few swings, I think, so try being kind to a soul who just wants to move. Don’t loathe yourself when you wake up as long as you wake up, as long as you keep your dreams and you don’t feel like drowning or screaming or leaving or—

Love lightly. Gently. Kindly. In the way of china plates and clumsily made origami roses. Mirrors are expensive but shards of glass are not marketable, I think, so maybe you should try eating a new ice cream flavor. Or try to wear a hat.

Be nice to your madness so it will not eat you. Or your ice cream.

You are this. You are here.

[skin-origami]

i was good at elementary math

I count the raindrops, listen to the sounds they make. One, two, three. Plunk, plunk, plunk. The rooftops hold our secret sorrows and count them, count the number of piano keys I have to press until I am ready to hurl myself into the soundless pit screaming for my name; there I will find explosions. One, two, three. A succession of disasters imploding against one another, brushing against someone else’s cries and wanting to turn and count tears. Zero, sir, zero, one, zero, one, two, zero, zero, zero, there is nothing to count, sir. My eyes are named Null and Void and they love windows.

I count footsteps and heartbeats and flaps of wings. Onetwothreefourfivesix they are too fast, sometimes, like they are rushing to a zenith of thunderclaps overlapping one after another, like whistles intertwining themselves with the path of our breaths. Call the people you love and tell them nothing, nothing, nothing, then recite the alphabet in no particular order until you can no longer tell what is missing. I know all my letters, and nothing disappears except for me, me, how many mes are there, private? None, sir. None. I know how to count from zero to zero.

I want to watch the sunrise. Sinking light is less impressive, honestly, I want to watch the world wake up to the sound of me counting the number of hours it would take for the sky to kick its blankets off and leave the stars for another lover. Call the people you hate and tell them you want to kiss them, sometimes. At other times you want to hate them more. I fill the chalkboard with tick marks, one man down, two, three, four, five. They all have the same name, so how do I say goodbye?

I keep my secrets behind numbers. Some of them, anyway. They are the ones people think I hide. But the real ones come out of my mouth in droves, I can’t count them, tentwentythirtyfourtyonehundred yes, yes, they can’t be hidden because nobody’s looking for them, anyway.  Call the people who love you and tell them you don’t love them back, there is no one, say there is no one. Then walk to the opposite side of the room and claw your way out like the prisoner you have turned yourself into, like me. Like me and my worn nails and fingers pointing out holes here and there and blocking them with my palms. But I don’t have enough, it seems. I have one, two palms and there are one hundred times ten raised to one thousand and that is a big number, yes? And it hides things better, like me.

I think there is no one else, love, and I count you, one you, one you, just one you and one of me but there are a million hers and I am not one of them because I don’t belong, I just count. I am the stray mark and the lost pen among pens, the one without ink. Call the people who hate you and tell them you love them. You will make them scream and you will scream with them, like me. Like us. Like counting plastic bags and clothes and boxes and pictures and check marks, check, check, all done now. All done.

I watch the page number change. I know where I am now, and I know where you are now, and neither of us know how many stars there are, so I guess the world is fair that way. I count your eyelashes and see one of them choose the breeze over your cheek. I wonder if that hurts. Probably. Call the people who can’t decide if you love them or they love you or both or if you hate them or they hate you or both. You don’t have to speak. Just call them, because you are crying, anyway, like me, and there are tears, more than one, yes, onetwothreefourfivesixtentwenty and now there are rivers. Storms make rivers. Choices make oceans and I am going to drown soon, so I look at you and count you.

One. One. There is only one and I used to think there was only one, too, but you are here and you are one.

I count the number of your arms. One, two. I have one, two, two arms, too.

She smiles like sunrise.

One.

I call the people I love and tell them nothing, nothing, nothing.

Zero.

[skin-origami]

the wallpaper looks just fine

Maybe I know nothing. Maybe I am made of endings and I love myself for it, because the mindset that everything is all going to hell anyway keeps me safe when it does go to hell. Maybe my skin sometimes feels like falling, or failing spring or burning houses. Maybe I am not the ground, I am not the strength they all seem to see, they cannot see the earthquakes, the shaking, the howling disguised as embers.

I look at the blue sky and feel raindrops on my face. The clouds will get angry soon, I know it. Someone out there can’t fall asleep because they keep thinking about a boy who does not smile often but has eyes made of velvet. Or a girl whose tongue looks like arrows but tastes like summer. And I can’t fall asleep because I keep thinking of too much alcohol and wheels screeching like a tormented soul and flowers plucked in all the wrong ways, arranged in clumps that will never look right. Or on good nights, I think about wings replacing hearts, necks that don’t twist that far and heads that will not turn no matter what.

I recognize people by the shape of their crushed hopes. It’s always the same, but different each time. I pass them by on the street in droves, all wearing transparent masks, and I want to stop them and ask them, “why didn’t you bring a fucking umbrella?”

There are fields the color of ashes. A battlefield of something that already ended a long, long time ago, before the laughter could bloom into the silent smiles that always knew something nobody else did. There are monuments with the face of dereliction and the tears of longing, and hope, and hands reaching for fading voices that already faded a long, long time ago.

Sometimes I can see why there are falling rocks, why we create lights, why thunderstorms flee at the sight of us. Sometimes I see why I stopped and looked back and why it hurt to not stop and not look back. Sometimes you smell like pouring ink and wells turned inside-out by madness and desperation and solitude, the one I told you I’ve always wanted. Sometimes I see why the universe is made of jewels and why van Gogh went outside to paint the stars.

But I am the vase of plastic flowers tucked in the corner of the living room, and everything else is wood and comfort and I am not part of this scene but I am and so I am left with no choice but to fill myself with what comes easiest: photographs or words or failure or nothing answered. I am made of everything I do not have the courage to think. My skull is a deathtrap.

Nothing escapes. The end of my world is buried there, trapped in nightmares and helpless, helpless, I am helpless and I keep laughing because this is the greatest joke of all and I can’t tell it.

Where do beginnings go?  Why don’t we look for our redemption somewhere else?

Maybe I know nothing. Maybe I am a shell on a beautiful china plate and dinner is over. Maybe I am still walking because everything inside me is screaming for me to turn back, turn back, it’s not yet too late, it just takes a little bravery and you’re back to crying for the right reasons, instead of no reason at all.

Maybe the abyss is what draws the gaze, Nietzsche. Maybe we are all blind until we decide we’re not.

I want a storm to wreck the wreckage that is me. I want rain. I want to touch your shoulders with fingers that are not winter.

Maybe.

Maybe.

[skin-origami]

that one wrong thing

I could have done it, you know. That one wrong thing everyone seems to be doing these days. I can do it now, if I want to. And if I tell myself this often enough. I suppose it’s not strange that words work better on me than anything.

My friends are all doing it. Slowly, subtly, discreetly—a slow unfurling of petals still tentative about the possibility of beauty. I don’t mind, but I don’t think they should keep doing it. See, my parents did it, too, and until now they can’t get through one day without hearing each other’s voices. Just a word. Just an offhand joke that only they found funny. It’s terrible. They and their messages, soft as snow beneath the lightning that was as loud as the things they don’t need to say, remind me why I should never do it.

Music encourages everyone to do this, because apparently it will make everything better. I cannot see how. I only see the way the world brightens at the command of a smile, the way it tilts and sweeps you off your feet at the behest of the right words at the wrong time, always the wrong time, and I see the way knees and skies break when people stop doing it. They all say that once you begin, you should never end, because beginnings encourage continuity, and continuity is the edge of a canyon and the end is always just an inch away, but we don’t like looking at it. Therefore, it does not exist yet.

It does, though. I know it does because it’s all I look at. When I imagine doing it, I only see the fall and none of the flying. Flying does sound great, though. Freedom and fright and insignificance and brightness and reflections and eyes, big eyes and thoughts you may one day be given the chance to know.

I was never given the chance to know.

That’s okay. That’s okay. That’s okay.

That’s okay.

That’s okay.

Words work on me better than anything. That’s why I never do it. All that wasted time trying to keep trespassers out of the house, locking everything and double-checking security, and still winding up in front of the door, staring at the hinges, at the doorknob, at the chain, wondering if someone is going to try to get in. If there is, well, they’d better stay on the right side of the door. If there isn’t, well, all the better for me. Safe. Steady. Stable. He’s not there. Safe. He’s not trying to get in. Steady. He has seen a bit, I think, and he is not there. Stable.

That’s okay.

He is not there.

I am safe here. Look at how high the walls go! Magnificent, are they not? They tower over me and my security and the unmoving ground and untilting earth and the empty canyon and the cracking branches of trees that were once part of my garden, but who needs gardens these days?  There is only static and silence and me and he was there but I looked away and he is not there anymore and that’s okay.

That’s okay.

I am not going to do it, anyway. I am going to stay here, where my screams and my silence sound pretty much the same thing because the mirror says so. Or was it the locked door? Or the clean doormat? My hands are smooth and unchafed, you know. The walls build themselves at the command of feet, walking away, one step by one step, almost a crawl, as if it is the most difficult thing to move away, away, away, my sanctuary is always away and he is not there.

He is not there and I can’t not do it.

[5000letters]

I knew I did from that first moment we met. It was… Not love at first sight exactly, but - familiarity. Like: oh, hello, it’s you. It’s going to be you.

Mhairi McFarlane (via 5000letters)

[skin-origami]

it started out like this

We were playing a game.

Everything was a piece, and we were no different. We were small, smaller than our wrists, small enough to fit in each other’s palms. We had an agreement, remember? We had all the details sorted out, and the only thing left was to act. We were going to cut the world with our feet, break its skin with our longing, cripple it with our touch. We were going to shatter our fears with fears that were more manageable. We were going to be different from everyone else.

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t do this—“

“We can do this,” you said.

So you taught me the rules and gave me everything I needed to start the game. We set out the pieces, and reluctant as I was, I wanted to win. I have always wanted to win.

I never asked you if you were also playing to win.

Maybe you were just doing it to entertain yourself, and I, the jester. But I have always been a funny woman, and I never minded being laughed at because I found them funnier than I was. Maybe one day, you took one look at me and decided my smiles were wood and winter, and I, the burning branch in the pyre, and you, the torch and the chilly wind.

And we played.

I looked at you all the time and I looked away from you all the time. I am an expert on denial and hypocrisy, love, I told you that, I told you many, many things and you believed none of them. That will always be my loss.

We made our moves.

I wanted to touch you. You wanted me to. I wanted you to tell me. I didn’t want you to know. You never told me. You never told me anything. You just stood close enough and you knew that I was a house of cards, and I knew you were made of mountains and feet. Nothing is ever fair, I know that, I told you that, I told you many, many things and you believed all of them.

That will always be your loss.

I wanted to walk in the rain with you. My loss. I wanted to open the door, so I did. My loss. I wanted your shoulders and the way they sagged when you were tired and you didn’t want anyone to notice. My loss. I wanted your eyes and your stares and I wanted your mouth and your wit and I wanted you, you and your bars and prisons and every inch of your sadness, because that has always been something I understood, but you never understood that, and it was my loss, mine, always, always mine. I wanted to feel something, and you obliged. My loss. I wanted to hurt something.

You obliged.

Your loss.

Our loss.

No one won, love. No one ever wins this game.

You should have told me that first. I would have believed you. I always believe you.

Ah—my loss.