This is my (late) entry to the #back2badlands project put on by halseydaily ! I took inspiration from the album and wrote a sort of letter type story about it. Enjoy!
Why Iâm leaving, signed âthe Wanderess.â
I met her in the middle of our torn-up park. Skipping stones in a polluted pond that grossly reflected the vine-covered street lights, the only solace of the night that this place could give. She spoke of places I only ever heard in the stories my parents would tell me. A place called Florida far away from here that had the clearest water which kissed the shore so lovingly. New York, a city where the neon lights actually shined and the people would sing show tunes and dance on ice in the middle of the park in the winter. Colorado, where snow fell and people would ride down hills and slopes on two sticks connected to your shoes. The rest of the world outside the Badlands, where people enjoyed living.
Her body was the canvas of beautifully inked designs, incomparable to my own which were done by a sewing needle and pen. She called herself a Wanderess, whatever that could mean, but no nine letter word could describe the way her lips moved in the moonlight, the way she pressed those cigarettes to her mouth and blew the gray smoke back into the equally gray world. She was my blue in this world of black and white.
I thought I had found a lover, a lover like religion. I thought I had found god, so young and beautiful, in this old, disgusting city. The flickering neon lights that I have seen slowly dim themselves day after wretched day down to only the slightest buzz of life ever since I was a child had seemed to finally revive.
But the canvas of her body was deceiving. Her tongue was a weapon and when placed between my thighs, turned deadly. Each night was a blur that I could never remember when the sun grew over the decomposing buildings and when the street lights would shut off. A blur of pleasure and desire, followed by longing and withdrawal the next day when I would awake only to the embrace of a hotel bed and holding the hand of the bottles of champagne we had downed. It was a by-night romance I had never understood until today.
I awoke to the comfort of stained sheets and smoke-scented pillows, the longing settling in its home in the pit of my stomach. I gathered myself and went to purchase more champagne, then walked the road that was supposedly under construction, but had been in this state since I was twelve. I found myself outside of her apartment complex, and climbed the sad and desolate stairwells, each step making the longing grow stronger. Step, desire, step, desire, step, desire. I stopped outside of her unit, 93, the need for her body and so-called love ever present in my mind when I crossed the threshold and saw nothing but an empty room. The walls where we painted the many sunrises we had witnessed together were the only trace of her left here, except for where she lingered on my lips. A single note remained on the kitchen sink, ripped at every edge, with a single word on it. I know now what she had meant that night at the park, skipping stones into the disgusting pond. I know why her lips moved the way they did, why she smoked the way she did, why her presence felt like that of a god, when it was really the devilâs in disguise. Because she could be described in nine letters.
So now as I trace these words onto paper, just as I would trace her body with my fingertips in the light of dawn, I am pulled to the side of the 405 at a gas station. Iâve picked up the last bottle of our cityâs âfamousâ champagne, and I aim not to return.
I am finally leaving the Badlands. The decomposing towers, the polluted ponds and overgrown parks, the solace of the street lights and hotel rooms, the bridge where people went to escape if they couldnât drive or had no bravery to do so. All of it. I am escaping these Badlands, and Iâm never returning. The cruel exchange of power within the government wouldnât let me come back anyhow. They never let anyone leave, and they never let anyone enter.
This is the last time I will be at the Gas Station off of the 405, the last time I will purchase this champagne, the last time I will flick a cigarette stub and its dying embers onto 42nd street. The last time I will ever see the pond that we skipped our stones at. The last time I will be reminded of her. It has to be, I can never come back.
Oh my god, I can never come back.
But maybe thatâs a good thing, as this place I had called home for so long has been sickening with every second since the day I was born, and will continue to do so until the day I die and long after, and because I too want to be described in nine letters.
So now is where I conclude this. Where I sign with Xâs and Oâs, to whoever finds this and to this city. Where I seal the envelope and leave it on the newspaper dispenser on 42nd street, just outside the decomposed casino as my salutation and farewell.
So hello, and Iâm sorry.
