Tea and Biscuit

… when you’re in a long distance relationship, and you keep logging onto chat to see if he’s on, only to see he’s not. But you keep refreshing the page just in case it’s a fluke, or a web error.

Why is it never just a fluke or a web error?

I do not care what car you drive or where you live. If you know someone who knows someone who knows someone. If your clothes are this years cutting edge. If your trust fund is unlimited. If you are A-list, B-list, or never-heard-of-you list. 

I only care about your words, and your actions. They are the only two things you truly own. The only things I will remember you by. I will not fall in love with your bones and skin. I will not fall in love with the places you have been, or the things you own, or the people you know.

I will not fall in love with anything but the words that flutter from your extraordinary mind. 

Why can’t you see yourself the way that I do?

You’re beautiful in every way, a perfection that nothing could replace. I tell you every day how much I love you, the curves of your body, the smiles we share when you parade yourself in front of me in a new dress or outfit just bought. I love the funny faces and goofy looks you make whenever you glance at me in passing, and I watch you out of the corner of my eye when you think you’re alone, and you do the same. You’re beautiful. How could I not love you with all of myself?

I’ve always been there for you, and I always will be. When you can’t live with yourself and you fall to your knees in front of me, and lift your hand up to mine, I’m there. Even if only in the brush of our fingertips. I cry with you, trying to convey the truth of what you will not see in me. But my gentle words of admiration and comfort always fall on deaf ears. You will hate me no matter how much I love you, no matter how much I scream my love for you, and bash my hands on the fragile wall between our differing perspectives until they are bloody and sore.

You often peer at me critically, searching for every tiny flaw, every fault that will allow you to hate me all the more. I do not mind. It gives me a chance to watch and examine the loveliness of each expression, up close, with our noses almost touching… even the negative ones. The cute way your forehead wrinkles when you’re deep in thought, the dimples when you find something you like about me and flash a split second smile. I love everything about you. And everything about you is inexplicably and exquisitely beautiful. Every little hair that won’t stay in place, every extra pound where you say there ought not to be one, every sun kissed freckle, every bent and chipped nail that makes you who you are. You call these things ugly, and you say I am ugly as well, and there’s no way you could ever love me.

And I find myself jealous of you. You have so much to offer: your beauty, your smiles. But you can’t see any of it because of your obsession with my faults; because of the shadow my perceived ugliness casts over you. I will always love you, and to me you will never be anything but beautiful. You have to listen to me, you must hear my words. But I cannot speak for you. You have the body, and you have the life. I’m just a reflection in a mirror. A soul in a piece of glass that knows you better than you know yourself.

Beauty.
Paper skin, paper heart
starlight eyes and black feathery lashes.
Soft and fluffy hair he loves to play with
Fragile, delicate. Sinewy bands of muscle
stretched over beautiful bones.
And,
you could see every single
one.

I let this happen, I suppose.
I was washed away
in the storm of her sadness, drifting away,
oceans away. Only able to watch her pain and suffering,
I began to wither.
Any chance I had of returning to her rests
at the bottom of the sea of her sadness.
A sea so deep,
That chance shall never be retrieved.

Although I know she is loved…
watching her be taken control of,
starve,
cry,
bleed,
I am dying, not being able to stop any of it.
We are dying together,
separately.
Impossible…how can you grow apart from yourself?

I grow weary now and it is time for me to finally sleep, and be washed out with the tide.

Today, I decided to paint. 

One, two, three. I counted the birds as they flew overhead, making a mental note to pick up cat food when I went to the store. A new project always muddled my thoughts together, jumbling them and tumbling them around and around like clothes in the dryer at the laundromat on 12th Street; oh– I should probably take my clothes to wash. My sweater still smells like you. They were crows– big, black, squawking things that turned cartwheels in the clouds and circled noisily above the trees, looking for carrion. I tilted my head to the right. I could see better that way. The peeps and cracks in the cool umbrage of my sheltered haven glinted and shone brilliantly. Drops of liquid sunshine cascaded through the holes; my eyes watered. Funny how I couldn’t cry myself to sleep, but my eyes could tear up at the sight of the sun. I brushed a few dead insects off of my quilt– their tiny bodies made no noise against my stained fingertips. The smeared blues and yellows and reds and pinks had slipped into the microscopic grooves and valleys of my fingerprints, and on the stark white canvas I drew a heart with my index finger, just for fun. I could always paint over it later. The bits and pieces of sky that I could see were glowing, with clouds swirling and sweeping across the heavens and creating elaborate shapes– I counted an ostrich playing soccer, an eagle with soaring wings, a hippogriff having tea and crumpets, and an apple with glasses on (granny smith, I think). The music playing had stopped; the cd must have hit a scratch. You never were very careful with your cd’s, not even bothering to take them with you when you left. I cleaned it with my sweater and put it back in, smiling a little when the notes and sounds resumed. My painting playlists tended to vary a little, depending on my mood and subject. Today’s was a long list– rich bluegrass instrumentals and folk crossovers, symphonic metal sans lyrics, roaring guitars and softly weeping pianos. I picked at a chip of blue paint on my quilt, humming quietly and no longer smiling. I always paint with my quilt. Call it a comfort thing, if you will. It’s the faded blue one, with the flowers and patches that sat up on my mother’s quilt rack for the longest time. You remember, don’t you? I didn’t think she’d miss it. She won’t miss it now, it’s covered in paint splatters– all pinks and yellows and greens and purples and oranges– and bits of paste and dead leaves, and it has a spot of woodstain in the middle from when you wanted to refurbish our cabinets (I was the one who suggested we paint them). The sun changed her position and turned the clouds halcyon; I mixed my paints on a bit of tin foil and took a sip from my cup of water (before I used it for paint, you silly). I chose a brush and swirled it around in the fluid pigment, chewing on the tip for a moment to gather my thoughts before smearing great sweeps and strokes across the canvas (part of my fingerprint heart was still visible). I didn’t know yet what I was going to paint; I just liked the colors. The slow brushstrokes were soft and soothing, and I soon forgot that I needed to take my clothes to wash, or that I needed to go through the things you left behind. My cd player– the one that still ran on those hulking-huge, almost-archaic D batteries– played on, and I found myself brushing and stroking away to the sounds of my heart, painting and playing my own lyrics to songs that had none.