this life is made for dying
Friday, March 30th, 2007
“i feel like a giant sundae, intense and compelling to all, but would anyone wish to have me at every meal?” she said. “and would i wish to be consumed regularly anyway?” she was smiling blithely. i couldn’t tell her how i felt. not because i was too shy or because i’d be rejected. i ordered another cheap bottle of wine.
i might have said that then, those were the days of fake color and i was so drunk that i could fall. i was so young that i could die of immaturity. i’d look in the mirror and be terrified by the bareness of unlived life i saw. time tasted raw and bitter then. i’d look at his face, and look away immediately.
she would dance wildly as if no one was around. she would speak words of malady as if nobody else would hear. i’d decided then that i’d never reveal. but i’d be with her like an unrequited ghost, keep her from hitting her head when she jumped too high, keep her from hitting her heart when she fell deep down. her presence blessed me.
he seemed wise, which he wasn’t. he was embarrassingly cordial. the way he inhaled my rowdy words would scare me. everyone had some stories about him. that his father was a famous film producer. that he was always away from the country, away from his divorced parents. that now he’d be he here, and soon he’d be gone. his presence soothed me.
only when i was around her life felt like itself. but i didn’t know how to keep it in place. like a small child thinking the world dissappears when he closes his eyes, i thought by keeping still i could keep everything that actualized this perfect existence as they had been. i had a recurring vision about shoving my face in the nape of her neck and breathe her in. the thought itself would give me a high. i used to imagine this instance so thoroughly that now i catch myself misconstruing it as reality.
time passed. we all had more. we got ourselves nailed to life with our ever increasing belongings. he seemed insistent on his vague presence, never attached nor remote. his perceived niceness strangled me. i was trembling, i got lost. eventually we all got sick of course. things like crying outloud, cathartic tantrums and fucking around were forbidden by now.
she crumbled. at unnoticable pace. i should have been warned when she became placid. but i never questioned her, never confronted. i thought if i let her be she’d be there. i was wrong. passivity is the cruelest misdeed. whatever she’d say, however she struggled, i would remain unmoved, stubbornly anchored somewhere invisible in her little life. no more, no less. i didn’t have the heart to consume her. so relentlessly, she faded away.
i look in the mirror. i’m debilitated by the pain of life unlived. i’m fine. the knowledge that i’ll never see his face doesn’t pierce me anymore. i smile.



