Paper Anatomy

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.

I dream of day, sometimes. There are footsteps on concrete, seas of people and their murmurs and their joys and miseries, coffee and bagels in mouths that were made to challenge hunger. The sunlight is always a golden spear, a piece of luminescence that never fails to hurt. I try to look directly at it because I am a sucker for the impossible, but, well, it is impossible.

I like distance. I am a connoisseur of detachment. There is an artful way to make your chest crumble in the face of seemingly immortal yearning. It only takes distance, and the ability to watch people without thinking about them or their hopes and wishes and the dead stars they have long forgotten about. I admire art in its many forms, and my judgment, my crticism, my questions all boil down to one word: why?

It’s my favorite question. Why? Why do I do this? There is no satisfaction, no reward. There is only an endless stretch of the same layer, same doors, same eyes. Everything is linear and I am shapeless and I can’t see the point of all this.

So why?

Sometimes I am forced to stop walking because I have to look. I pause. My heart slows to a crawl. My breaths become breezes in my lungs, and for this moment, I am empty and glad for it. I look at the way the clouds bend and twist in unseen movements and we barely notice when they burn, but I take my time, I always do, I take my time to watch the colors burst into chaos.

There go the artists of the sky, with their paintbrushes made from feathers and flight, and their visions of spectacles and vistas and conflagrations trapped in horizons that just may envy us and our feet and our small lives and our colossal dreams of an existence that touches constellatins. We are all suckers for the impossible. I know. You know.

But god, do we wish we don’t.

I dream of you, sometimes. Not often, I tell you, because I am not made for dreaming. But if I were the kind of person who looks back as she walks away, I would look at you and I would dream of you much, much later, when there is time for regret and wishes that the stars have long forgotten. Heavenly bodies do not care about me, nor you, nor anyone else in this world, so we remain a race terribly desperate to be held.

I dream of you, sometimes. Not often, love, because I don’t do that anymore. If I were the kind of girl you would want, I would break you in half, kiss your pieces together, then smash you with a hammer and cry you back together, so I can threw bottles and mirrors at you until you are as shattered as I am and we will try to save each other and we will only end up making each other bleed, because that’s how it works.

But god, do we wish it doesn’t.

I dream, sometimes. There I am leaf and you are stone. There we are neither what we really are. I am not dead inside and you are not afraid of my honesty. There I am capable of loving and you look at me and see me. There I am laughter and rose petals and you are smiles and all the right words. There I am someone you’d like and you are someone I will never hurt.

There I am leaf, and you are stone, and when we cross each other’s paths our differences will be mere dust.

And god, do I wish.

fangirl challenge 2.0 » [49/?] characters