Stay High • Alex Høgh Andersen •

act four

He's attractive enough. Not that it matters. What matters is that I thought he was you. Golden brown hair, tall. Blue eyes that are - close enough. His eyes don't pierce me, don't force me to dream about a world I've always been warned about. I can live with that, though.

Alex, you kissed me back, it wasn't in my mind. I had thought that it was mutual, that you felt it too, but maybe I was wrong. 

I gossiped to my mirror, my pillow about it, "He kissed me back." It only jeered at my callowness.

Maybe if I take this one home with me, maybe I can kiss him blank. Wipe away who I am, a college girl falling into obsession over a boy who gave me a spark, and who he is, a nobody. Wipe away his imperfect hair, his dull eyes and even duller intellect. If I kiss him hard enough, maybe I can turn a tie into your mustard colored scarf. He'll go blank, I'll be blind, and I can pretend it's all you. Maybe.

He watched me take off my clothes. He just stood there, like you did our first time. But it wasn't like in that. It was like hell. I could feel his eyes boring into me, seeing nothing but flesh - and somehow that hurt, because I had thought that at least you saw that there was more to me than what meets the mind. I had thought that you saw past my writing and past my ideas. All I ever wanted is for you to not see me that way; broken and  unsalvageable. All you ever saw was my youthful ignorance;

Just like this one did. Kissing him blank didn't work. I can still see. I can see that he's imperfect, that he's not you. I can see because I know everything about your body. From your prominent jaw to your slightly bony elbows that you hate and your hips - don't think I was ignorant to it all. Just because I fell in love with your mind, Alex, doesn't mean I didn't notice your body.

And I don't think I can get away from you. So kissing doesn't make a face blank, but fucking; fucking will fix it. He tried to climb in behind me, but I couldn't do it . Even if from behind meant it would be easier, even if from behind I could forgive myself for this, even if from behind I could lie and tell myself it was you, I couldn't. Because that was never your style. You would have wanted me to see your face the whole time, you wouldn't have wanted me to take the easy way out. A front row seat to the destruction I've started to cause, I can't miss out on that. I thought looking up at him would mean I could pretend I was doing this for you, but it just brought the lesson home harder. With every grunt and every movement of his hips, every time he shouted my name, the one he only learned a couple of hours ago, it just told me that you, Alex Hogh Andersen, wanted nothing to do with me.

I closed my eyes. I've seen those around me crash and burn. I have seen them mad and naked, running through alleyways as dark as their minds. I have always been prepared for devastation. I could never pretend that this was you, even behind my eyelids. You wouldn't have wanted it this way, you never did. But if I kept them open, I fear I would have collapsed at the desolation reflected in his eyes. I was torn open, strewn across the room, an exploded woman on display for a world that wanted no part of me.