The Mirror

Beneath my toes it snakes in and out, drawing life from it and drawing life with it. I watch it as it does this, slowly eroding away at my ten curling attempts at holding onto this world, and I smile a bitter smile. Far beyond my reach the flame of the world is burning out at the horizon with never a sound; it’s an explosion no one ever hears, night by night. The approaching cool warns that this night is near and with it will come the velvet of the sky unbroken.

From my lips passes forth a heavy sigh and the regrets of all that I know I’ve brought to ruin. Casting a glance at the windows lit above me, watching your gentle silhouette move from shoulders to long, lean legs, I’m cursing myself for ever walking onto paradise’s shallow shores. It’s been years since I came here, years since your offer over coffee to come and spend the weekend with you transpired into weekends and weekends fading quickly to overcome the years.

What’ve we to show for that? I’m walking alone out here, toes curled deep into thousands of specks of life. I’m a little taller, my shoulders a little broader, my waist a little narrower. You? You were perfect then and you still are, towering above me. It’s three flights of rickety, splintered stairs to reach my heart, my home.

To look at you is to accomplish the same task as to gaze beyond, to search out that tired sun dipping beneath the waves. I’ve tried to run from you in the past, and make my home elsewhere. These shores are something I’ve sworn up and down I can find in a million other hearts, in a million other tiny little coves to hide myself. But these promises are just crashing fruitlessly against every fiber I know within, cliffs to guard your stormy emotions from running amuck.

Maybe it’s your whispers that keep me locked so deeply within this trap, the whispers I can’t forget when I close my eyes in the dark. Just when I’ve imagined I can break free, when all the curses and haughty snippets finally pile themselves into an unimaginable heap nearly run through the hourglass, the last of the tiny beads can catch on your whisper: Je t’aime. And in your delicate sleep, the soft pads of your fingers wind their way into my hair, brushing delicately, and the hourglass tips head over heels.

It’s those tiny beads of sand clinging so stubbornly to my feet as I turn from the sea and make my way slowly back toward the rickety stairs I must now climb to reach my fate. I ponder the size of sand crystals, the way such tiny fragments can have their varying affects. If they were much smaller, perhaps shaped a tad differently, my feet would be pierced infinitely with the sharpest splinters of pain, a thousand miniscule knives so glorious in their appearance but so painful as they slide without a trace to torment me from beneath my skin.

And suddenly, climbing those steps, I’m thinking of you. You were always the beautiful one, you were always the ugly one – you were whimsical, yet you planned everything to the letter; you laughed in absolute pure joy and then you cried as if the earth had crumbled beneath you. And all the while you blamed me for each and every tangent into passion.

But while the passion fades, your blame doesn’t. Even now, my toe gently pushing open the door hanging so precariously upon its hinges, you eyes are flashing, screaming for me to use my hands, to walk with a lighter step, to be more like your imitation of perfection. With a wooden spoon dangling from your fingers to the pot on the stove, perfectly simmering a soup I would have scalded instantly, without saying a word you’ve made me into those specks of sand I felt I’d left behind.

Hours later and the house is quiet save the noise of the waves beneath us. You’d made your effort to keep up the appearance, pressing your lips to my flesh and going into the motions of what a happy couple should be. You went so far as to lay your cheek against my chest, pretending to seek a comfort you never found before rolling to your side and holding the feathers the way you once clung to me. Our bodies still shimmering with sweat, you sleep soundly, assured your world is continuing on as it has for all these nights we’ve shared.

Yet I’m awake and waiting for your slumber. Tonight, you weren’t the only one foolish enough to think two poor fools could trip each other into their rut. My bag is tucked securely beneath you, hiding under the protection of a bed you probably feel your throne. The irony of it makes my lips dance into the only smile I’ve truly smiled all day as I slowly slip from beneath the sheets. Light dancing across the panels of the floorboards to catch my toes in their escape, so carefully plotted and planned. Even the floorboards are against me as they creak and moan in protest. Perhaps they beg to not be left alone with you.

The clothes I had so robotically cast aside quickly replaced themselves over my skin, holding me tight as they clung to the sweat. Deeply asleep, your body now tosses and turns and I freeze, hands in mid-tug on the hem of my t-shirt. Shall I be caught in this moment, frozen in the icy light?

Heart pounding with the threat of discovery, my bag slides quickly on my shoulder and I pause in the door way, touching on all the memories with the same tentativeness my fingers graze the splintering doorframe. In turning to leave, my eyes glimpse an open notebook, pen poised carelessly against the lined sheets. My thoughts below the sunset running wild in my imagination I fancy leaving you a letter to commend my final move into extinguishing your flame. In the same creeping fashion I had made my escape, now I returned, slinking back, perhaps a sign it was an act I could never avoid. Shifting anxiously, pen against paper, I find a place to start writing:

You told me I had a choice. You told me that I could be a light shining bright; you said I could be the flame or the mirror reflecting it into the endless starry night. You told me this, eyes glittering with the evening’s surrounding protection draping into you.

I never chose to be the mirror, but you were the flame. The choice was made before I opened my gaze to the stars I could never quite be or reach.

You danced in crazy circles around me, and I envied you. I wanted you to fall, to close those lapis lazuli, forever and ever Amen. And then I would chase my own words back, banishing my awful thoughts.

Je t’aime, je t’aime.

I begged you not to love me; I begged you to just walk away.

Je me souviens.

You didn’t want to hurt us. But when it came down to it, I just think you didn’t want to hurt you. I don’t think it really concerned you that no matter how painful you found things to be, it was forever worse on me. I don’t think the thought even pierced you, so cold in your blues.

You were strong, yes you were, but, God you were a fool.

Je ris, je ris.

Yet I was the more foolish, I suppose, that’s the honest truth if I’m going to take the Lord’s name in vain. I was the one to love, to give in to those pleas of a child you spurted in a soft whisper. You were too tempting to me; you, with cherry lips curling oh so delicately over such pale, smooth skin. Such a fragile child you were, delicate ringlets draping your features. Many a night, I could fancy you a doll, what with the moonlight draping your features in innocence. Silk skin, lounging over and under the sheets but shining still with a perfect luminescence all the while.

But you were never those pathetic playthings. I should have known not to throw you about; should have known that you were so strong inside.

Oh, the screaming matches you’d hurl at me, that soft whisper now a demon’s angry growl... I remember those hands of yours, short fingers trying to look graceful with many colors. But your hands were always just stubby fingers so stubborn in their mold, never smooth even in the air’s lack of resistance.

You’d always wanted to have hands like mine; I knew it the way you watched me use them. You’d watch, always, as my fingers caressed you, that feminine flesh giving to the softest touch. You’d observe my committing of every delicious curve of your body to memory and you’d watch those same fingers dance over ivory or metal, always so detached in your gaze. The canvas of my passion never mattered much to you; I could paint the rainbow across that tiny body of yours or I could grind the rain over a massive expanse of paper. But all the while, your smile was just a façade you smeared on, day by day, to accompany the rainbow of charcoals and the professor’s nodding gaze.

In the same fashion, you’d watch my fingers fly to drizzling eyes time and time again, so careful to keep your distance. Such a child, too selfish and impatient to let me in, to let me see you for what you were, only becoming more and more frenzied in your terror that I just might defeat you, break your walls so you never learned to build them again.

You used to tell me I didn’t want to know your demons. You used to insist that I never wanted to meet them, for they were horrid creatures, horrid indeed. I knew what you said was true, for I saw them flash through your eyes in the dead of night, yet I never stopped asking.

When they finally did unleash themselves, I trembled before them. For you had been right all along; I thought I was ready. I was convinced I could handle it, but the truth was that when it was there, I couldn’t. The bedtime stories of my grandmother were all coming true, but not from under my bed, but instead escaping from every part of you.

I ran, and I ran swift as the wind. You’d made me just as vulnerable as you’d always felt and I wanted to hurt you. Yet I couldn’t, for I’d asked for it. And I couldn’t because you were too strong, stronger than I ever thought, and stronger than I ever was. The same way grandmother’s stories could keep me hiding under the sheets, our bed drew me back into the comfort of hiding.

When I came back it was with the certainty you were waiting. Atop those shaky steps, you demanded to know, begged me to tell you, what did this say about me, what did this say about you? Why, I had to know. I wouldn’t have run away if I didn’t know the truth, because that was all I ever ran from.

Your lips curled into a horrid smirk and you laughed, the same laugh of silver bells. Then in a fierce opposition of such a joyous sound, you crashed into the rooms as the waves I’d always catch you watching so intently, the night closing around you, shutting me out from you. I, left to stare behind me, leaning on a rail always so ready to collapse beneath me, back again to stare deep into the seductive curl of the ocean’s fingers, beckoning in assurance I can’t say no.

You were those waves, you know. I thought I could get ahead of you, I thought I could ride out the worst of you. But I never counted on the rogues, the ones that came flying out of the sky, laughed at me, and darted away again. Those would leave me sputtering, drowning in this treacherous ocean. And all the while… je me souviens.

You were this thing I could never quite understand or control and I told myself I accepted it. Time and time again, I told myself I accepted defeat in the face of your walls, your eyes standing guard upon parapets of earth-worn granite.

But here I am now, writing this all down while you sleep, quicksilver spilling all around our room. An ocean lays close and throws out teasing traces of what it has to offer, and I used to snatch up all there was. But I can’t get passed the anger of those waves anymore, for all I see in the frigid waters is your own cold gaze.

The first time I came here, it was your scent I so deliciously pulled through my senses, that mingling of the seas with your aura of sensations. Now I’m leaning over this desk that contains as much of me as you, the both of us captured, and the bag on my shoulder aching with the strain of remaining so still.

I steal another quick glimpse of you and wonder if perhaps you know what I’m doing, if you’re awake and watching me slip away. Not letting me leave you, and not casting me out, but watching with your detached emotions sunken long ago below our windows. Playing the drowned victim, my victim, so that when I came sneaking back your voice will be the only one that matters; you will have suffered in my hands. So you can demand my apology, and hold your head high, shut me out as the one to not trust. So you can scream that for all my efforts to draw you out, I’ll never succeed because the second you let me in I’m taking off into the wind. So there you’ll stand, the parapets mighty in their sentinel, sparkling with the fresh rain of tears, with only the wind to tangle your hair with its passion.

Passion, that’s the key. In that sudden moment, I’ve realized you’re the most beautiful creature I’ve come across. You, with your short fingers and tangled tresses and words that cut deep. You, with your being so connected to the waves below our window that you’ve become as the waters and merely watched life come and go under the pale moon.

I have dropped my bag and oh so quietly nudged it under our bed. The jacket has returned to its place on the back of our chair to wait for another day. I can’t leave you, no, not tonight. You shall read this and perhaps your tongue shall lash most powerfully come morning and I’ll find myself below again, those ten tiny holds on the earth all that’s left to me.

Je me souviens, je ris et tu finis mais, je t’aime.

I know I can’t leave, for if I am but the mirror; I need you to give me light.