FragileThingWithFeathers

I think of her hug. All elbows jabbing and palms pressing and chin digging, soft warm skin of her cheek pressed into mine. She was a skinny little thing, ravaged by her own body, and as such it felt like holding a delicate little hummingbird in the palm of my clumsy hands.

I think of her laugh, and the way it split her face wide open, happiness bleeding through the creases by her eyes and the open gash of her smile, and that tiny diamond in her eye. How it stuttered in before it escaped her in high pitched, delighted peals of laughter.

I think of the crease in the middle of her brows as I walked her through Shakespeare, eyes narrowed and lips pursed as she tried to muddle through the layers of it all. I speak it reverently. She cannot understand my reverence, but she tries to.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

I think of her eyelids drooping and chin tucking into her chest as I explain iambic pentameter. The IV beeps in the background as she lifts her head, and twists her body to the side, reaching for the machine to “get a C on that” as the HCA comes hustling to her bay to take her obs. She barely glances at the sweet looking woman, frown back on her face as she focuses on me. Me, dragging out the very last vestiges of her precious energy to help her understand why it’s so important that the meter emphasised the “and” and not the “tomorrow”, and why death is dusty (the Bible), and why life is a candle and not any other transient, flickering, warm, tiny thing.

I think about waking up in the afternoon to six missed calls and a message asking me to call her. I think about my own, barely managed, concern as I rush to my mother’s bedroom as I call her back. I think about the buoyant excitement in her voice as she tells me she thinks that she crushed it, and that she couldn’t wait to call and tell me that she’s “so, so happy”. I promise her we’ll celebrate together with a picnic after her exams.

I think about prying my eyelids open at six in the morning a week later to answer the last of her frantic questions before her 8am exam. The low whisper of her voice that comes with that early morning hush, even as it reverberates with the kind of panic that always precedes an exam you feel unprepared for. The background sounds of a nurse helping her get her things ready, the rustle of the papers she flicks through for reference as her words tumble from her mouth a mile a minute. The way it almost feels like it all goes silent and still as I, still in my half-asleep state, try to gentle it all.

“No matter how any of this goes, I’m so goddamn proud of you, my angel. So, so proud. And you should be too. I love you. You’re going to be just fine, yes?”

“Yes.”

I think about the way the individual ridges of her spine felt under my palm as I dragged it firmly but tenderly down the length of her back, before bringing it back to the nape of her neck and repeating the motion, murmuring quietly as she threw up into the sick bowl in my other hand. Of the way her little body tipped a little into mine as she sipped water afterwards and breathed through the last of the nausea. Of the way she finally giggled when I faux told her older brother off for not hugging her properly after her ordeal. Of the way I directed it—a bumbling actor and his stern director—and the way she tucked her face into his neck when he finally wrapped his arms around her. Of the way I ducked out from the side of the curtain, wishing I’d had my phone on me so I could’ve captured the moment.

I think of all these fragments of my friend, and so many more. I wonder how many I’ll forget and how desperately I’ll try to remember. I think that she’ll come to me as these fragments come to me now, sharp-edged, carrying as much grief as they do love. I think I’ll hold the memory of her, cradled in my palm, even as it slices into the paper-thin skin of my hand.

I travelled the paths of my childhood in my dreams last night. 

When I woke up, I could not tell you where they are or where they lead, but I knew both once. 

I think there is inherent anguish in being a young woman. A desperation and acute sense of suffering that haunts the years. A lump permanently lodged in the back of your throat. A building rage tamped down by alcohol, cigarettes, dancing, dating, fucking, reading, running. 

Maybe that’s not being a young woman. Maybe that’s just being me. A general anxiety that accompanies everyday existence I am consistently trying to tamp out, dull down, drown out. 

In all fairness, this is being written with six double shots of gin and two cigarettes and a general sense of frustration. Two of my friends are hung up over piece of shit men. I myself am hung up over a friend who maybe really isn’t. Maybe never really was. A piece of shit man himself. Maybe. 

I can’t tell if I’m infatuated or madly in love or just desperate to be liked, platonically, by someone I like, platonically. I can’t tell if I’m pissed off or mildly upset or genuinely sad. I can’t be sure if my insecurity is feeding into this or if this is feeding into my insecurity. Perhaps the worst feedback loop of all time. 

I am this terrible raging whirlpool of anxiety and anger and devastation. It bleeds into me and I bleed it into others. I speak truths I wish I’d kept to myself. I dream of being hugged. I eye pretty boys at the bar and wonder how bad it would be to just ask one of them to kiss me. I’m pretty enough. 

I feel everything entirely. I wish to simultaneously purge it all and feel it all. Feel something else. Feel anything else, but intensely. 

I am grieving friends I have lost and friends I am about to and I’m deeply concerned that my grief is inherently performative and that I am a performance. I am smiling—and I genuinely mean it—and my chest hurts all the time. 

Not medically. Although maybe I should get this checked out. It’s nothing serious, just the dull ache of missing everything I’ve ever had and missing everything I am going to lose. There is so much to do, that I keep forgetting to do, and that I don’t want to do, and that I’m afraid of. So much I’ve said that I shouldn’t have and so much I haven’t that I should. 

all the love in the world to the truly wonderful incredible hugely talented ao3 user tx13 who drew some truly insane art inspired by my fic The Bodyguard???!!! every single time i think about it my vision goes a lil blurry and my heart feels so full, i'm actually so grateful and mindblown

She delicately holds the filter tip to her lips with the index and middle finger of her right hand, pulling out a light from the inside pocket of her jacket with the other. Hovering the hood of it—God and Adam—just a hair away from gently grazing the end of the Lucky Strike, she rolls her thumb against the sparkwheel, watching the flame jump to life with the rattle of the flint. The white filter paper darkens, before the light dies out. She tries again, a spark flashing against the tip, before flashing out of existence.

She adapts. Rolling her lips around the filter end, she holds the stick with her red-stained mouth, before cupping a hand around the lighter and shielding it from the wind. Her thumb spins the sparkwheel but the spark barely flickers before it dies. She tries again. Once. Twice.

The third time she utters a low curse. She twists her torso to the side, using her body to shield her desperate attempts for a flicker of luck before the now-raw skin of her thumb spins the sparkwheel again. The metal strikes against the flint with a whispered rasp and a flame flutters to life like she dragged it out reluctantly from the bottom of Pandora’s jar. She pulls pulls pulls a deep drag into the depths of her lungs.

A tiny star burns amidst the black cosmos of the filter paper.

The taste of tobacco floods her mouth, sticking to the roof of her palate and the back of her throat as she leans back on her elbows against the stair two steps above the one she’s sat on. She sucks in the smoke, tongue pressed against the back of her top teeth, head falling back in relief as she exhales a steady stream of smoke to the dark heavens.

Her head swivels as the heavy black door behind her creaks open and two chatting girls step out and absently walk around her. She is a spectre. Her eyes follow them down the street as she brings her right hand to her mouth and sucks in another drag of death-stained luck. She watches the smoke she exhales float towards the night sky, the side stream smoke hangs in the air around her. It settles into her skin her clothes her hair.

The air is a biting cold; she craves it. She shrugs out of her jacket and slips it through her purse handles, left clad in a half transparent white shirt. Her dark green M&S bra is visible underneath. The two girls return bearing a small supermarket cake and two tubs of ice-cream. She glances away, returning her gaze to the smatter of stars in the sky as the shorter girl slides a key into the lock and heaves her shoulder against the heavy wood. The slice of orange light zigzagging down the five stone steps thins out of existence as the door creaks shut. She’s never been very good at stargazing, but she always knows where to find Orion and Sirius. She pulls another drag as her phone buzzes with two notifications in quick succession.

She decides to ignore it. Her thumb flicks the filter, the chipped nail scraping across the wine-coloured smudge circling the tip of the orange, as smatterings of ash settle into the weave of her blue denim jeans. Her gaze drops down to the cigarette dangling from her fingers, about half burned down by now, staring at the tiny crackling orange amidst blackening paper. Is she lucky now? Or maybe she needs to smoke the whole thing, sort of like finishing an antibiotic course. Or maybe the luck comes with the crushing of the stub with her heel; as though all her bad luck has diffused into the filter as she smoked, and she will crush it as she does the filter. Bad luck left only as a tiny pile of ashes and flattened paper at the bottom of her friend's apartment stoop.

The door opens again, the black loafer on her left foot lit up by the slice of light. A figure slips through and the door thuds shut again. As she lifts the cigarette to her lips and keeps her eyes absently on Orion, she hears a bit of shuffling behind her as the figure lowers down to sit on her step.

"Um–"

"Fuck off."

At her brisque dismissal, the figure huffs what she thinks might be an amused snort.

"I was only going to ask for a light," the figure says in a low voice, "but I'm guessing you're not quite in the sharing mood."

"Oh, fuck off," she snaps back. The figure laughs again. She doesn't know why she does it, but she reaches for her jacket and pulls out her red Clipper, holding it out on the palm of her hand like an offering. Long fingers appear in the corner of her vision and pluck it from her grasp. She hears the rasp of the sparkwheel and smiles to herself as the figure utters a brief curse before they twist their torso to the side and try again. A moment later, the red lighter is placed exactly in the middle of the gap between them. Leaving it there, she takes another drag, holding it in her lungs before slowly blowing out a stream of smoke.

"Why come out for a smoke without a light?" The question comes out more accusatory than she had intended.

The figure's voice is an almost arrogant drawl though it answers her question in good faith, "I'd been meaning to pop down to Tesco's, but there you were: my saving grace."

"My name's Grace."

"Is it really?"

"No."

"Aw, that's a shame. Would've been funny if it was." A pause. "I'm Michael."

"Really?"

"Nope." At this, she lets out a soft laugh.

"Touche.” She laughs quietly again. "Out of interest, why Michael?"

The figure chuckles, "I don't know, first name that popped into my head I guess."

They sit together in silence for a couple of minutes before the figure speaks again.

"Bad day?"

She snorts, "You have no idea." She drops her stub to the ground beneath her and crushes it with the tip of her shoe: best to be safe. She ignores the sound of shuffling next to her, eyes examining the half flattened filter paper and the ashes half tumbling out of it, when a hand slowly appears in her line of sight, a cigarette held out between the fore and middle finger. Wordlessly, she reaches out her own hand, gingerly placing her own fingers in an imitation of his at the very tip of the filter, before slowly sliding it out of his grasp and placing it between her lips.

Her lighter appears in front of her, a cupped hand shielding it from the biting wind. She leans forward still holding the cigarette steady as his thumb spins at the sparkwheel. Nothing.

He tries again. Once. Twice.

“I think your light’s bust,” he comments lightly, letting it fall from his long fingers back to its designated place between them. Her head falls back and her eyes squeeze shut as she lets out a low groan of frustration around the cigarette.

“This fucking day.”

They sit together in the still silence for a moment. Then, she hears the sound of shuffling next to her again, but ignores it until she feels a light tapping on her knee. She reluctantly turns her head, registering the figure’s new closeness from the sudden warmth against her left side, cracking open one eye only to meet his earnest tawny orange ones as he brings his lips towards her, half-smoked cigarette still dangling loosely from them. She half rears back in horror before realising what he’s trying to do when his fingers go up to hold his cigarette firmly.

Slowly, she leans in, bringing up her own hand to hold her unlit cigarette steady between her lips. With careful precision, she delicately places the blackened tip of her cigarette to the curling edges of his, eyes fluttering shut as they inhale together in quiet synchrony. Smoke rushes into her lungs, burning the back of her throat, the acrid taste flooding her mouth. She leans back, lips curling into a slow, satisfied smile. Then, exhaling a steady stream of smoke into his face, she watches as he grins back, eyes glinting through the haze.

They sit together, him watching her and her watching the sky, smoking in comfortable silence. When she finishes her cigarette, she flicks it to ground as she rises to her feet, picking up her bag with one hand and dusting the back of her jeans with the other.

"Um," she turns her head over her shoulder as her feet patter down the front steps, "see you around?" Then she turns the corner and disappears into the dark night.

The stranger—Michael-not-Michael—watches the empty space where she used to be, smoke rising faintly from his cigarette.

The night exhales softly with him.

The stoop is quiet again.

Somewhere far above, Orion keeps watch.

'This dark is everywhere'

we said, and called it light,

coming to ourselves.

Fear

has at me, dearest. Even this night

drags down. The moon's gone. Someone shakes an old black camera-cloth

in front of our eyes.

Yours glint like a snowman's eyes.