#mdprose

ii. I wish we lived closer so we could go to lunch as easily as an impulse. So I could try out yoga with you and you'd laugh at my surprisingly poor sense of balance. So I could drag you along to more clicking-filled poetry slams. So we could catch-up and binge watch movies and walk to the local park in the mornings and cook for each other at night and not worry about anything else.

iii. Sometimes I see you like I do streetlights with squinted eyes - distant and bright but fading, dream-like. Are you real? Sometimes there are cars that drive too fast for the music in my ears, but they continue to speed into oblivion without me. I watch as they fade, as the last of the fairy lights disappear with them. You exist outside of me.

iv. I loved you, and I think I still do and will do forever, but not how I used to. It's not the same. We're not the same.

How do you kiss a person? Last night I saw people kissing as casually as drawing breath. They were whispering secrets into each other’s lungs and inhaling the other person’s soul, heads tilted and fingers curious as neon lights flashed and threatened to outshine the brightest of your suns. Even my best friend was lured into locking lips with a sandpaper-tongued-boy hoping to quench his thirst before leaving. 

I ask because I am 19 and have never kissed anyone before. These facts together seem worthless to you but they feel like they should mean the world to me. I ask because last night I met a dark-haired boy who shook my hand and didn’t feel the tremor in my fingers or hear the uncertainty in my voice. He danced badly but smiled kindly and, looking into his eyes, I pondered the possibility of him being my first. 

We spoke with short sentences, trying for a decent connection by shouting over the music. I leaned in so close that I could smell his aftershave and feel the heat radiating off his body and I wondered if this was why they turned the music up so loud - to drown out the white noise of horrible singing and give people an excuse to move nearer without actually touching.

But after a while I began to doubt myself. My movements became rigid and I pulled my arms in, dancing closer to my friend and looking anywhere but at him and his friend. My throat closed up and I pulled my guard up like it was a straitjacket keeping me from making a fool of myself. He eventually lost interest or was pulled away by his friend and regret was there to replace where he stood, a mocking ghost of my indecision.

Dear Universe, last night I could have kissed a boy. That’s what people do at clubs… right? You don’t meet people there, you make out with them, as my best friend said the next morning. I’m just not sure if I wanted to. I’m not sure if my nerves were closing my throat or if that wasn’t the right place for a first kiss or if I’ve built my expectations up like unreachable dreams.

And yet I still wonder... what would it have been like if that doubt wasn’t there? If I continued talking and didn’t close up... Would I have kissed a boy and have a story to tell? Would I have found an answer to my question?

Love,

Let your eyes unfocus, dear. Let them rest on the soft grass outside your window. Don’t squint and don’t be scared; look without looking. 

The wind outside blows as if it’s a world away from you - untouchable - but the skeleton trees try to scare you by throwing their leaves at the glass. Focus on the grass, though. See how they look like faraway reeds, glittering in the afternoon sunlight? If you unfocus enough it’ll look like the ocean. Or summer heat shimmering, shivering, in the cold of an almost-winter.

We are old fences leaning on empty air, tired of standing up straight. Sometimes we forget to rest. Some days gravity feels a lot stronger than other days. But soon the shadows will grow longer - playthings hiding in the background of your backyard. 

You intimidate me. There are a lot of things that intimidate me - doing well in school, socialising with strangers, the enormity of space - and I've learnt to live with or overcome most of these things, but with you... It's different.

We used to play together as kids. Do you remember? Sleepovers with chilling ghost stories and beach trips with crumbling sand castles. But now, ten years on, we're strangers that barely talk to each other at family dinners. I only hear about what your life is like is through my mum. 

From what I can gather, you're successful in all aspects of life. You've got a great job, you’re active, you’ve travelled all over the world with family and friends, you can socialise amazingly well, you are unbelievably coordinated and you have a lovely fashion sense. I can’t believe only a few years separate us. You're beautiful in a way that makes me question how we're even related and I’m not talking about just your slim frame and amazing complexion. It’s just... the confidence that radiates from you. You are unforgivably you and it fills me with awe and wonder and fear. 

My dearest, I used to think you were the better version of me; you’re everything I aspire to be. And it intimidated me enough to become anxious and awkward and antisocial around you. I try, I really do. And you seem to smile encouragingly, saying all the right words. But it’s me that’s falling short. It’s always me. And after every attempt at a conversation you’ll drift off to talk to someone else and my body will fill with inadequacy and regret and I’ll cross my arms and turn away and hug myself tighter and think about how different we both are.

As much as I’ve grown throughout the past few years I know I’ll never match up to you. It’s not fair on either of us to compare. I just wish we could talk like friends. I wish things were different.

Love, 

ii. A passing notion that maybe she’d like to wear something like this. Or maybe that we’d have deep existential conversations about the human condition based off this book. Or there’s this simile I thought of late last night that reminded me of her.

iii. I see her in my writing too. The first short story I wrote for university breathed like her; as if she had grabbed a handful of stars and blew it onto my work. 

iv. I remember her as one part cosmic entity and two parts take-no-shit cyborg; a creature with a tragic backstory who somehow manages to stand strong and smile like a survivor. I don’t know what she is now though. Or where. Or who.

v. At times I loved her like a student loves their teacher, and at other times like a younger sister loves their older sister. I loved her with admiration in my eyes and a desire to make her proud tucked inside my heart. A love that transcends the quiet of conversations and the burdens of great distances.

My friend once told me she disliked seeing writers on tumblr with their faces fully revealed. She preferred their profiles somewhat obscured - whether by position or lighting - showing only the curve of their lips, the sharpness of their collarbones, the cascade of their hair, or the gleam in their eyes reserved for us, and only us, dear readers... 

Any piece of the puzzle that didn’t expose the truth and shatter the illusion.

Could it be said, then, that there is something attractive in the mysterious facades, enigmas and pseudonyms us writers wear? When we slip into the dress of deception so well? Do we give our readers the opportunity to unravel this riddle - our features and ourselves - hidden in the forest of letters and symbols, prose and poetry, life and love?