(st)art

NOTES ON BEING AN ANGEL

Drifting in through the open window are the sounds of a city on the gilded perch of the fresh, brisk promise of a New Year. (How fond we are of promises). I hear the golden pitches of trumpeting cabs, barking salesmen, a baseball game underway in the park, bicycles gunning through the naked streets, madmen mumbling truths beneath their salted breath. 

All of this disgusting, glorious world. It is enough to break your heart. 

I am a young thing, all body and mind. A clear glass of water for a mind. How the rush of images lace the abyss of my brain. How the images leap at me like starved fish. I wish I knew what it was to be held. I did, once. I was held in Rome beneath the pretty awnings, the misted rain which fell as though embarrassed at the realization of touch. I was beautiful, then. Alone, all those hours in the studio pacing, beaming, thinking thoughts which left me panting like a dog coming in from the heat. I peered into the lens as though it could love me. How the minutes felt like years. How lived I felt upon returning. As though I were a veteran with war pushed into my sights, as though I knew the sounds of detonation overhead. 

I know nothing. I know myself as well as I know anything at all; my thin ankles and teacup pupils and the veil of hair which hangs from my skull. I have mastered the art of Francesca. (Francesca wants too much). And how fearful the world is of girls who know themselves. How the world flinches at a girl in her skin. 

Nobody is home. All around me, silence falls like a thousand hefty anchors. I am laying on the cold with my back pressed against the polished hardwood. The scent of a candle burning in the kitchen. Oak and vanilla. I attempt to fall into the blue glare of the television but the headlines resound and everything else reminds me of the piercing needle in my soul. I burn. 

Perhaps I was foolish to believe I could have what I want. I have seen everything. I have swallowed twenty-two swords in my lifetime. One for each year. I know the loneliness of Dahmer, the love of poets. I have killed the horse of dreams. I have ruined it all. I was beautiful in Rome. 

But I am not to be seen. That much is clear. I am a thing to be scared into corners. I am a leviathan. 

It is getting late. Outside, the snow is piled on the corners of shops. 

I undress. Though it doesn’t feel as though I am losing anything by doing so. 

I stand on the ledge. I give you one last chance. But nothing calls and nothing comes. The world is an open window; the world is undeserving. I open the window with my hands. 

Yves Trémorin