Author's note:
I am still writing for 30_kisses challenges, although I missed all the
deadlines last year and was removed from the claims list. Actually I
don’t care. I want to finish it. This is fiction bordering close on the
reality. It’s been hunting me for days, no, months. And here it is,
finally. Not really satisfied with two last paragraphs. Might want to
change those later.
Someone wake me up
“It feels just like I'm going crazy
I guess that this is breaking up
And now not even you can save me
Will someone wake me up?”
The Veronicas
This morning I wake up feeling the old heartache settle over me as a
blanket. I nimbly find my way through the kitchen to the coffee
machine. Its sound is extremely loud and reminds me of the way you
threw that cup at me, but missed. Hot contents and white pieces of
porcelain littered the floor for hours because I couldn’t make myself
care enough.
The coffee is scalding hot, but I don’t really feel it. I am tired of
endless arguments, trying to see the whole thing from your point of
view. I dread going out. Because it shocks me how after all these
fights my heart still skips a beat when I see you.
Keys in my hand, fast driving just on the border of suicidal, coffee in
the lobby and, yes, there you are – all crisp and fresh in a white
t-shirt and black vest and I bought that tie for you two years ago. But
there are also blue jeans and snickers – your discontinuity at best.
You smile, I nod. We begin the endless journey to the twenty-seventh
floor.
In the tower of my mind my thoughts are kept in the farthest dungeon,
so no word and no flicker of the eyes can betray me. We make a small
talk. You ask what I did last night and I laugh and ask if you stayed
up all night composing. We talk of the nonsense things like cars and
cell phones and music. We don’t talk about our fights or broken lives
or threat each other with filling for divorce.
Because even though in my mind we have been married for years, been
fighting for over two because we still can’t decide who is going to
keep the kids - you are still twenty-something and unaware of my
feelings to you.
The rehearsal is a usual mess of random jokes, high sung notes and
music sheets littering every surface with an occasional plastic coffee
cup surfacing here and there. It’s fun and it’s tiring and it’s all
ways of uncomfortable. Your laugh is rich as a five-year-old whiskey
and as intoxicating. You sing low, but laugh high. And your vest has
that distracting soft quality to it; my fingers itch to rub it.
The smoke break finds the two of us outside sharing a pack and a
lighter the way we wouldn’t share our lives. It’s sweet and fast and
addictive, just like the sex with you, I know I would never have. It’s
been so easy to imagine all that and more, how I wanted three kids and
you wanted none and we had to compromise. Or how we bought the house
and that car and how we argue every summer where to spend the vacation.
I can see it all in my mind like a movie, every day of our lives that
we never spent together - everything, from the first kiss to the last
argument we had over the taxes.
You throw away a cigarette butt and watch me finish off mine. Your eyes
are dark and watchful and I have a sudden feeling that you can read me
as an open book. My hand shakes just a little, and I shake my head to
clear it, because we still might marry one day and might even adopt two
little kids - a boy and a girl, you said, smiling. But it is so far,
millions of years far from now and what really matters is now and you
and the look that you give me under those lashes.
As if you know and approve and promise that one day I will wake up to
see my dream become a reality.
February 24, 2009