Sunday, 18 September 2011

Part 2... The Noise Outside...


What a beautiful morning, what a beautiful man. She spent many an AM in this position, and as the world spun around them they were at rest. Silence and stillness was a rarity when she was with him, and to see him now unaware of his vulnerability, uncaring of his status and unafraid of their closeness was a sight to behold. She had awoken this morning with her face tucked into his chest and his arm folding her into him. The sun must have been shining on them for hours as their sticky skin held them together as one mass of flesh and fascination. She looked up her man and with disbelief she thought of how luck had also shone on her the day they had met.  Some people speak of life and love as a painful struggle between self-indulgence and self-sacrifice, but they had never met him. It was as easy to love him as it was to breath and without thought, reservation or sense she loved him. She loved him so much. To her, love was black and white and it was as simple and as foolish as that.

He looked so peaceful when he slept, and as his chest rose and sunk under her face she could almost see him exhaling every complexity from which he had build his life upon. There was no doubt he was damaged, but she had put her heart on his scars and although they were gouged deeper than she could ever see her warming love had healed his surface. She would never understand him and this was clear from the day they had met, but she understood what he needed. Stability, security and a safety net; the only three things he was incapable of providing for himself.  He was far too reckless to know when to stop or even recognize where it started and the blurring speeds at which he moved were alien to her, she could never understand him but she embraced him all the same.

Her eyes lowered now, past his beautifully tattooed chest, over his muscular shoulder and out of the window. She sighed deeply, because she knew that out there people stood with their accusations and judgments. Outside these four walls of calm, she would have to brace herself for war. A war of overly opinionated people who try to tear down these very walls that she had invested time and effort to build whilst carrying him all the way. But in her heart she knew that none of it was true and so she would caste her dignity to the side and defend him until the end. She held him high with one hand and kept down all the nonbelievers with the other, pushing them with a force so strong and cutting they never came back. Friends, colleagues even her own sister had tried to convince her otherwise with their stories of his pretense… why didn’t they get it? She would never listen because she preferred the silence.



As the morning drew on and the sun continued to rise, she delighted in their serenity. She wrapped her legs around his and snuggled into his neck embracing him once again. His flaws flew out of the window and although every now and then she would gaze past him to the world outside, she never stared for too long. The noise was deafening out there…. He began to stir and rolled over to face her. His large frame now blocked out the sun and the window; she refused to look through him for fear of what she might see. Instead, she closed her eyes and turned over too, they really did make the perfect spoon! Once again, all sound was in the distance and as he pulled her backwards towards him she knew that he would always protect her from them, just as she would always protect him from himself. Once again, silence. They lay like this for as long as they could, until their silence was disturbed by the ringing of a phone. His phone. In the pocket of his jeans that were strew on the floor his phone was vibrating violently… His eyes tore open - he knew it was her.

Friday, 16 September 2011

Part 1... He's Dreaming of Fire...

He has nothing to say, there was never anything to say. It was a flickering flame that was lit by fate and would be blown out by that same bitterly fateful gust of reality.  Storming home he laughs to himself as the realization hits him that it was all in his head. He grasped onto nothing, a thought that manifested into a feeling and manipulated the shreds of moral judgment he had left. It was all in his head, all of it. Its funny the way we psychologically construct these situations to fill in the gaps, but he knows better than anyone that they will eventually fall through and the same soul bearing holes remain, with the spot light of guilt and regret shining through each of them in a blinding ray. There’s no way to avoid it, he’s been a mug - replaying situations and finding lost comfort in the idea of her, but its just an idea, an ideal. In reality, she is far from that but more of a distraction from the aching lack of satisfaction that is numbed by nights he spends in the arms of his adoring girlfriend.

His girl is really great, but what’s great if he can’t relate? The shadows of his past cause his eyes to wandering as he creeps home back to her once again by the light of the moon. Step after sordid step along the same road they’ve walked down together time after time, hand in hand. She’ll probably be asleep when he gets back, she always is – tucked away from his touch she’s safe. As he peels back the duvet and slides gently next to her, his skin is still frozen from the bitter winds outside but her warmth engulfs him completely. She is always warm and he loves this about her, but after a while warm just doesn’t do it for him; familiarity kills passion. He wants fire and as the testosterone and narcotics pumped through his veins tonight, eventually finding and polluting his heart, her warmth was distant and dull to him. He had all the heat he could handle as many times as he wanted, but fire can melt a heart of ice, or burn pride to the ground. In his case both, she was under his skin now and as he pulled his girlfriend towards him with her tiny hand resting on his chest, his heart below was still thumping for someone else.


And there they are again, those soul holes allowing spotlights to shine right through him. How can he avoid them? They dissect the very core of his being from guilt to confusion, every hole, another mistake, another uncertain moment. On nights like tonight, he’ll hold his beautiful girl as close as he can and keep plugging those holes that reveal the truth. But sooner or later they reappear bigger and more soul scathing then before. So as he drifts asleep with her but without her, the distasteful winds of reality blow straight through him. All these distorted emotions have caused a draught with a breeze so sharp that it hurts against the edges of the very holes that make him who he is, or rather who he’s not. With a chaotic dispersion of innate affection and utter selfishness, his eyes slowly close. The bullets of regret rain down around their bed landing upon his tired heart and mischievous mind and with a final sigh of exhaustion he’s once again dreaming… dreaming of fire.


T B C