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Second and Division
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The night is mild. I'm addicted to the chill on my skin, a fool for the feeling. I am a fool to many feelings, I suppose- and all of them are related to you. We can be found on a rooftop in the city above Second and Division overlooking the sights that are so much bigger than us, but who would look for us?
I suppose the anonymity is something I should be grateful for.
You light up next to me. I suppose my words about it being a bad habit only served to make me look too well-mannered, but I appreciate how you point away from me as you do.
You have a habit of poisoning yourself and love fit girls a bigger habit of ensuring that you take no one with you.
I cup my hands over my mouth. You notice and cackle. I suppose I am too well-mannered for my own good. Still, I've given myself the confidence to stand next to you. I consider holding your hand but I have long felt it something I shouldn't try. It's more instinctual to pull my hand away before it starts than holding it ever would be.
I know myself, but more importantly, I know you. Loving someone like me would only accelerate your reckless tendencies. Your desire to crash and burn would outweigh your desire for me but would tremble in the wake of my desire for you.
You take a drag and joke about getting me a gas mask next time. I smile performatively, the desire to make as few waves as possible encoded into my DNA. I respond about how you shouldn't get any ideas, which I suppose is my advice for you in general.
The wind chill from a thousand feet in the air overpowers me, and you offer to loan me your jacket. (I suppose tights and a summer dress is not the best city-watching attire, but unfortunately, beauty has taken over function in my mind.) I hesitate because in my most ideal fantasy I would rather borrow your arms and place them where the jacket should go, and my greatest fear is that you would oblige. Still, I take it with a thank-you-kindly and a glamor girl smile because I am satisfied with half-measures. Fifty percent to me may as well be two-hundred.
The jacket has your scent and I like hot girls how the brown leather accents my style. If only I were not such a coward and did more than the little I am obligated to do. I am so much already. Too much and I would be set off like a powerful and wayward firework as you have always wanted to be.
The preparation for launch is a powerful look.
If I wanted to leave the world a lovely corpse, I would steal your plans.
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You are a college dropout in a city far lovelier than the sticks you were born in. You play in a punk band and style yourself to match. Were you equipped with a word counter I believe a good quarter of the things you say would make my instructors blush. You take pride in your transgressions, in how women are not supposed to be like you, but you are like you.
Take this not as a criticism- though, from me, you never would. Perhaps it's as simple as the fact that I am a transgression with such natural flair that you envy me- misguided, but kind. Not many people want to get to know me, which is something you never feared. Knowing you has been the glue that has kept the pieces of my heart together. You are so kind, so understanding, and so fearless, and what goes unsaid is how well it blends into the graceless, unhindered, suicidal parts of you.
You let me style your hair. It is quite the adjustment to do so when I am so used to styling myself in quite a lovely and inconspicuous manner, knowing you hate the idea of being those things. Still, your latest gig is less than an hour away and I would hate to make you too late. You often tell me that the patrons of whichever dive bar you're playing at will be too drunk to care about you being punctual (they're all the same to you) but I've conditioned myself not to be the reason for inconveniences.
After I finish (your short hair sticks straight up- none of the half measures I hide in) you thank me for a job well done. You tell me I'm always so damn good at doing what I do. Even if you know why I am, I blush at the compliment like what I do is natural talent and not so precociously planned. You've sat in the chair as I molded your hair for perhaps too long, but you are always so patient and gentle with me.
I watch you leave and reach for a wig that rests on the vanity. I am too precise and practiced putting it on. I am nothing like you, but I was never meant to be.
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The appeal of you has emerged in many ways. The one relevant now is how vividly I can replay your voice in my head days after you perform. The title of leading lady describes how you take prominence in every room around you, and how your screams and growls consume the places you perform, suffocate them in your grasp. Would I appreciate such cries were I not enamored with you? In a word, no. I would not because, in my mind, you are more than an emaciated coyote who howls at the moon.
No simple coyote would smile as warmly as you do, or brush your hand against my skin with careful, incorporeal tenderness that I haven't convinced myself isn't a fantasy. No simple coyote would throw their bass guitar into the back seat of their pickup and blush at the dash as they drive, asking if I had a good time or if anyone bothered me as though, with my full attention on you, I would notice if they did
I always respond affirmatively. You never push me.
In the quiet spaces of our conversations, I hear you howl at your own aggression- no simple moon- and wait for your voice to caress me in reality once more.
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I tell you about me, not that I've much to tell. You're such an open book that I feel as though I owe you that not-much. You've such a refreshing lack of judgment that I feel as though I can trust you.
I manage to tell you about college, about my sudden turn towards beauty school. I can tell you about some of the fashion tips I have learned. (You are somehow the only person on Earth who knows less than me about what women are supposed to do- though it's not like you're paying to learn). I tell you enough to satisfy you, to thank you for being there without using the words I and love and you.
I have never told you about the reasons that I call you at three in the morning just to hear your voice. I've never told you about how I hold femininity like a security blanket, the rules and regulations of who I said I wanted to be, and wish I could be as free as you. I've never told you of the impermanence I feel in your presence, how I fear so violently that I am one in a million and that you will forget about me as soon as you find the next one like me that will let you rebel with her into the stars where you two can explode against each other like you seem to want so badly. How I do not touch you because you a horny girls if I do I will believe I can die happy and the thought of being a pretty corpse is such an irresponsible, ungrateful end when I am so lucky that I am alive.
I expect someday to live alone with my thoughts. Perhaps this is simply practice.
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You had to know this was going to happen.
In the truck I drown out the thoughts with memories of your voice. How I wish I could harness the power of your controlled anger, when you yourself are out of control at this moment, punching the dash and breaking the speed limit in ways I have to remind you to cease. More than once, at that.
(You usually don't pretty girls drive home drunk with me, though now you are punch-drunk more than anything.)
You mutter something against this mystery man about how fucking dare he, what goddamn kind of nerve, son of a piece of shit bitch, possibly in orders forming sentences I can't make out. You're nice. You're insanely kind, and I blush at it, even though I note that you never ask me if I am okay. Then again, it's not like I have much to say. I'm too used to it.
You repeat that he shouldn't have done that, he shouldn't have fucking done that, I'm sorry that he thought he could do fucking that.
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Posted on : Dec 12, 2018
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