You'll never know this, but you chose a child.
I'm the woman in a loose sweatshirt, addicted to strong coffee, leaving behind a sillage of strawberries and paranoia. I sit on your wooden floor, doodling absently in the corner of a notebook, gently biting my fingernails and twirling one strand of my hair around my finger. I try to think, then I try not to think about my inability to think anymore. I'm never awake when you come home. You always find me curled up on the floor carpet, fast asleep, drowning in a heap of papers.
You shake your head and find your way to the kitchen, and there it is. Bright pink today. Waiting patiently on the fridge door. "Dinner in the oven, don't burn the crust". With a faint smile you peel off the note and eat in the company of your solitude.
I can sense every tense moment the next morning. I can feel you watching me. You can sense my desperation, my longing for a conversation. But you calmly drift off to sleep. A faint breeze rocks the sepia photographs framed on the walls. The haunting fragility of memories is a mere accessory now.
A year later, I try to look within the deep recesses of my emotions to hunt down slivers of existing regret and my failure brings me neither satisfaction nor sorrow. Your arms were not meant to be home. Your laugh wasn't meant to be the soothing symphony for my restless mind.
You were always lost around me and I was finding myself, so when you left, your feet echoing further away from the door, I was glad that in my strange, twisted way I helped you find your destination, at last.
I was chastised for my detachment, my lack of affection, my lack of concern. My unnerving tendency to escape into oblivion, knowing every answer but finding the right questions. I made you tear your beautiful hair, which I loved running my fingers through, I made you into a book that forgot how to read itself.
You used to laugh at my idiosyncrasies, till I became one for the world. Then I was no longer the pleasure that came from a solved puzzle. I was just the frustration that came from an unsolved one. I was the realization that came from holding the wrong piece, one that didn't fit. That was when you abandoned me. I wasn't a conundrum; I was incomplete.
Out in the cold night, you will pull your coat closer to you. You will walk back to the old apartment ,where we stayed all those years ago, where the floors were stone and where everything was comfortingly closer. Where you found my detachment so annoyingly attractive, where I pretended I never cared. You will leaf through the familiar scents and stories of our dalliance and maybe, just maybe, a tear of nostalgia will escape your eyes. You will crash on the floor, breathing hard, lost again for a while, aimlessly hunting through all the belongings that never meant anything to me but everything to you.
And just, when you will make peace with yourself, the false backing of the last drawer will give away. Inside, will be notes of every imaginable shade, stuck firmly. They speak of you. Everything about you. From the way you like your bagel, to how I cut down my bath salt supply so you could fuel your gadget obsession from our monthly budget. From the fact that you hate my favorite song, to the fact that I pretended to hate it so that you could play yours. My concern, hidden by a veil of insecurity, will find you. My compromises, spectators in our shadows, will find you.
My notes will find you.
My love will find you.
And I will no longer be the puzzle you left incomplete.
I will be a fragment of your memory.
Bright pink.
Flapping cheerfully from the refrigerator door
Telling you, dinner's in the oven, don't burn the crust.
I'm the woman in a loose sweatshirt, addicted to strong coffee, leaving behind a sillage of strawberries and paranoia. I sit on your wooden floor, doodling absently in the corner of a notebook, gently biting my fingernails and twirling one strand of my hair around my finger. I try to think, then I try not to think about my inability to think anymore. I'm never awake when you come home. You always find me curled up on the floor carpet, fast asleep, drowning in a heap of papers.
You shake your head and find your way to the kitchen, and there it is. Bright pink today. Waiting patiently on the fridge door. "Dinner in the oven, don't burn the crust". With a faint smile you peel off the note and eat in the company of your solitude.
I can sense every tense moment the next morning. I can feel you watching me. You can sense my desperation, my longing for a conversation. But you calmly drift off to sleep. A faint breeze rocks the sepia photographs framed on the walls. The haunting fragility of memories is a mere accessory now.
A year later, I try to look within the deep recesses of my emotions to hunt down slivers of existing regret and my failure brings me neither satisfaction nor sorrow. Your arms were not meant to be home. Your laugh wasn't meant to be the soothing symphony for my restless mind.
You were always lost around me and I was finding myself, so when you left, your feet echoing further away from the door, I was glad that in my strange, twisted way I helped you find your destination, at last.
I was chastised for my detachment, my lack of affection, my lack of concern. My unnerving tendency to escape into oblivion, knowing every answer but finding the right questions. I made you tear your beautiful hair, which I loved running my fingers through, I made you into a book that forgot how to read itself.
You used to laugh at my idiosyncrasies, till I became one for the world. Then I was no longer the pleasure that came from a solved puzzle. I was just the frustration that came from an unsolved one. I was the realization that came from holding the wrong piece, one that didn't fit. That was when you abandoned me. I wasn't a conundrum; I was incomplete.
Out in the cold night, you will pull your coat closer to you. You will walk back to the old apartment ,where we stayed all those years ago, where the floors were stone and where everything was comfortingly closer. Where you found my detachment so annoyingly attractive, where I pretended I never cared. You will leaf through the familiar scents and stories of our dalliance and maybe, just maybe, a tear of nostalgia will escape your eyes. You will crash on the floor, breathing hard, lost again for a while, aimlessly hunting through all the belongings that never meant anything to me but everything to you.
And just, when you will make peace with yourself, the false backing of the last drawer will give away. Inside, will be notes of every imaginable shade, stuck firmly. They speak of you. Everything about you. From the way you like your bagel, to how I cut down my bath salt supply so you could fuel your gadget obsession from our monthly budget. From the fact that you hate my favorite song, to the fact that I pretended to hate it so that you could play yours. My concern, hidden by a veil of insecurity, will find you. My compromises, spectators in our shadows, will find you.
My notes will find you.
My love will find you.
And I will no longer be the puzzle you left incomplete.
I will be a fragment of your memory.
Bright pink.
Flapping cheerfully from the refrigerator door
Telling you, dinner's in the oven, don't burn the crust.
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