EYE STORIES
Poisoned flowers and an empty chocolate box sitting on my doorstep. Words of beautiful love flow so easily from his lips and crawl their way across rugged terrain to me.
He looks at her and he smiles until it almost makes him cry. “Go on,” say my eyes. “ You know you want to”. Yet he shies away like a little boy, like the little boy that he is. Yesterday he told me all he wanted was sex. He didn’t want anyone to call him any more and he would only ring when he wanted sex. I laughed and told him I would never have sex with him again if that was going to be his new policy.
I wonder why he left me standing there holding my wings after he ripped them from my spine and he flew off to heaven and I wonder why he left me standing there, holding my wings and crying. Our relationship still haunts me today. I wanted her, he wanted me and she wanted him and yet now we have nothing. Boy meets girl, meets girl, meets boy. And all he could say was love.
Love.
Personally I have never been in love. I don’t know the directions and I wonder if it has a cover charge. Many of my dear, close friends have been in love and they tell me it’s a wondrous place full of wonderful people and technicolour lights.
Yeah.
I think to myself and stay quiet so as not to disturb their raving revelry. But I wonder if being in love is so fun then why do they so often come out of it in tears and take shelter in my arms, while I stroke their heads and console them, promising then they will be in love again soon.
It’s funny that no matter how many times being in love hurts them they still go back again and again and again. They spend much of their money in love. Lavishing it around as if it grows on trees. Perhaps money does grow on trees when you’re in love.
I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been in love.
Dead roses and a choker, sitting on my pillow. Flesh-tinged fish smell of him still lingers in my bathroom. I wince and turn away. My carpet still looks like him and I miss him now.
I don’t like being in love. You see I tried it. Yesterday. I’m not going to be in love again. It’s no fun. I thought I didn’t know where love was but I found it. Then I broke it and it broke me. Now I live alone, devoid of love. It doesn’t exist in my world. But that’s fine with me cause I don’t feel much.
Harps are playing in heaven and he sends me messages, telling me how soft the clouds are and how much he wishes that I was there. I note his witty sarcasms.
She had black rings around her eyes. I told her that she wore too much make up but even to the end she will not listen to me. I fold her into my arms and we hold, ignoring eyes that would ask questions, were it not impolite. She feeds me temptations and runs from my hungers. I long to have her while I am losing her. Only time for one more. She would gouge my eyes out and take them with her if she could stand the pain of my screams. Soon it is gone. She is no longer filling the space in front of me, yet it still resembles her outline, like the paper left over after you cut out the paper doll.
Goodbye paper doll goodbye.
Black tulips and a wilted teddy bear on my table and I am left alone, crowded on all sides by my thoughts of him. I wonder if the worms that surrounded my imaginary casket can eat their way through to feast on my flesh and I scream but there is on-one in the forest to hear the tree fall. I wonder if he knew that she would leave me. I wonder if that’s why he left so suddenly. Because he wasn’t strong enough to hold me when I came out of love.
I remember us together. I would study her while I watched him. If I closed my eyes slightly and peered through my lashes it looked as though she had flames pouring from her skull. She would move away from me and I would follow her slow erotic dance. Together we laughed and cried and we’d drag on our cigarettes, passing the smoke between us and then on to him. His envy consumed everything around him. Yet he said nothing. A small bubble of
contempt rose within me but it quickly burst, as bubbles do, and was forgotten.
I remember the penetration of the eyes into my mind and I wonder if he took a part of it with him to heaven and that is why I can only think of him and nothing else, because nothing else will fit inside this broken box they call my head. I miss her.
I had walked up the mountain because I wanted to feel alone. I had gazed up at the sky-full of stars, all seeming like tiny pinpricks in cover for heaven. From my vantage point on the mountain I looked down. The town with all it’s street lamps, had looked like a bay full of boats, each with a lantern. A party bay of boats. My eyes traversed back up to the sky and focused on the moon. It glowed and started to come closer. Soon it became the headlight of a train bearing down on my from the sky. Maybe it wanted to take me away to heaven. Heavenly moon train.
I snorted in disgust as I realised what I was thinking. Heaven? What heaven? My beautiful fantasy sky came crashing down, disturbed by my criticism. I look and I look but I cannot capture it again. Once more the heavenly moon train has left the station without me and I feel like crying.
And I miss him now again.
Sometimes I want nothing. Nothing can be fun after days of everything. I lived my life to be with them and no-one else could ever be them to me. Waiting for my pain to come, hopelessly waiting to fall until eventually I seek the pain and when it comes I enjoy it. Everyone thinks I’m crazy but the suspense is worse. The sparrow claws at me as its impatience grows. It’s funny because no-one knows. Nobody even seems to care. I’m vomiting blood clots from my toes but no-one is noticing it. I guess it’s because you can’t lose if you don’t try and that’s why none of us bother anymore. My blood runs very thin right now. I am very weak. Depression is a worthy foe but I am strong and I will survive.
Sadness is a state of mind and they say loneliness is a self-inflicted disease but I know he gave it to me. Like AIDS it travels through my blood and eats away at my flesh like the worms. And I scream.
Kill yourself or learn to live. I wanted to die under the stars but there were none to see. I miss them both. They don’t know, they just don’t know. I don’t want to die now. Why does everything have to be so hard? Love can never stand the test of time, there’s either too much or never enough. Have you drowned in love? Feelings I can never show and wounds that are too deep to heal. Some things you just never find, a shadow is too hard to steal.
ALTERED REALITIES
The haze was green like snot, to her eyes. He told her that it was grey and billowy, like any other smoke, but she knew better. The wind whipped along the balcony, infiltrating her bones, her blood, her marrow. She took a drag and shivered. He snaked his arm around her and tried to suck the warmth from her body. She clung to her cigarette fiercely and glared at him. She started chanting loudly, continuously, allowing herself to be swept away in the notion that she could protect herself from leeches such as him.
He slunk away and peered blearily at the ground below, then he threw himself off the balcony. She jumped up and ran to the edge, panicked, only to see him swimming lazily through the grass and floating upon the daisies. He was eaten by a weed shark but it obviously didn’t like the taste and it spat him back out into the green sea.
She turned away and laughed but a part of her wished to cry, although she knew she wouldn’t. After all, it wasn’t the thing to do. He climbed back up to join her on the balcony and they huddled together against the evil wind.
Her hair lashed his face and his stubble grazed her neck but neither really cared. They were winning the battle against Mother Nature as she attempted to freeze them both to death.
The wind had long since taken care of the haze that had clung to the balcony but she missed it and wished for its cosiness to come back again.
As the clouds blow away the moon shines down and seems like the light at the end of the tunnel. She feels like she could just step into the sky walking towards the lights of the stars and stepping through the moon. She wonders what lies there. She hopes it will be the Garden of Eden, a beautiful rainforest filled with velvet-soft grass, curling ferns and a waterfall for her to stand under
while the water caresses her face and all around will be the smell of freshness pervading the air.
She knows this is a cliché and that she could be longing to find a new world, inhabited by a race of people who could cure cancer and all that but she knows that it’s only wishful thinking anyway. Nothing she has wished for has ever come true anyway.
They walk together along streets which have become endless and are watched by faceless masses that wonder at their vacant, reddened eyes. They stop in a field and lie in the long grass. It is now she sees the pixies. They are dancing towards her through the air. They have no substance but are only outlines, transparent. At first she thinks they are friendly pixies but soon she realises they are evil. They hold a needle and a spool of thread. They begin to sew her lips together. She can feel no pain but she cannot talk. She tries to tell him what is happening but all that comes out are muffled mumbles. Finally she manages to break open the threads but in the confusion of her jumbled mind she shrieks out:
“The ewoks are coming to burn my eyes out!”
He looks at her struggles with bewildered amusement. He snickers inwardly and attempts to help her but ends up in a convulsion of giggles.
She lies on the grass for what seems like weeks, glassy eyed, drooling, unable to move but her mind is churning with a thousand thoughts. Suddenly it stops and one of them becomes clear and she cannot stop thinking about it. What would happen if the rainbow was made of a substance like ice? If a plane crashed into it would it shatter like glass or fall in big chunks to the ground? Maybe it would fall on people and kill them, it would, after all, be falling quite fast from such a height, and then it would melt away and there would be this squashed dead guy in a puddle of colour and no-one would know why he was dead because no-one but her could even conceive that the rainbow might be solid.