dreamland

twenty-seven

I was leaving the blue house with my face grim and my mind floating higher than colorful kites did so on windy days.
I was thinking so much about him.
Too much even.
I didn't want to think of him.
I wanted to be next to him.

I didn't like this feeling of longing when I could be spending long hours with him. I wanted to know what happened. It mutilated me every time I thought about it. I came so close to going to him on several occasions but my best friend had stopped me and I had stopped myself the other times. So I was left with the wistfulness under my eyes and hidden in my tone.
It wasn't a pretty look on me.
I think it made me exhausting to be around.

My best friend was already seeing someone new anyway. It was a girl that always smelt like apple cider and laundry detergent. I remember asking her once if she liked apple cider and she made a face before saying no.

My elusiveness had pushed her away to the point that she just simply stopped asking.
We were friends and all but she wouldn't beg me, friends didn't make you beg.
It had been just three days but god did they ever feel like longer than that.
She would ask and ask and I would offer her my cheek instead of a true response.
So I was all by my lonesome, smoking next to a girl that I knew since high school.
We were sitting on the blue couch in the blue house where everyone was stoned or just watching Friday the 13th on tv.
She got really loud and zealous just after just two hits & it was killing my wallow buzz.
I knew that she had been one of the many girls that had gossiped loudly about me.
But now that seemed like something from another life.
Not mine.
But really it was still mine.
It was a joke to deny it.
It was all interconnected.
Every tiny fragment of our lives were intertwined and they always lead us some place else.
I was once again stuck on heartbreak lane but the panorama was different.
It wasn't the same as the one I had resided in after you.

You reached for me swiftly while I looked down at my red shoes.
I was wondering how some shoes were red and others yellow and why one couldn't be yellow and the other red.
Your hands wrapped around me and your lips kissed me voraciously.
My first instinct was to open my eyes.
I didn't want to think it was the wrong guy.
I had to be sure.
But you kept moving me backwards and the lights glimmered and so my brain floated.
I pushed and you pulled away and said my name, god, I missed you.
I looked at you with a look that could have hurt you if actually had been in your right mind.
But you weren't.

Don't do that, you can't do that anymore I said, my voice cracking.
You looked handsome but now it just annoyed me.
It made you superfluous to me now.
How could you possibly look this good without being aware, without spending long hours at the mirror, without doing something.
Your facial hair covered your face like chocolate sprinkles and the bags under your eyes looked like shaded crescent moons.
You look distressed and disturbed and messy and still rugged.
I kept wiping my mouth as you watched me.
I wanted to taste him on my lips.
I didn't want to taste you.

Why not, I don't care what you did, I made a big mistake too, remember, you said holding my face.
I was too confused to even bother pushing you away.
Your hands felt like any hands touching me to greet me and say goodbye.
They didn't feel like hands that I wanted to lay myself in.
They didn't feel like hands that caused tiny sparks and lightning strikes on my epidermis.

What, what did I do, I asked seeing tiny swirls on your cheeks.
I blinked and they disappeared and I told myself that I really should quit the pot.
The streetlight dimmed and glowed and dimmed and glowed.
It was distracting, more than your face had been to me.

You had sex with him and I know that, but I forgive you, you said to me.

I blinked and staggered back.
It felt like I had been stabbed right in the pit of my stomach.
I thought I saw lightning, blue lightning bolts in the sky, but I wasn't sure.