Thursday, July 5, 2012

The asterisk in his eye.


I had myself a prince. He was pure and wholesome, and all who knew him thought he was the most magnificent creature they'd ever met. His eyes were clear and brilliant. They always caught mine when I suspected it least and held me where I stood. He was perfect. He was mine.
One day the monsters came for him, but he didn't see fit to mention it to me. He'd sold his soul to them in the days of his youth, in exchange for a taste of a smile. In his childhood, he'd never known happiness, and he'd given his life to achieve it.
The monster tore off to shreds the soul that I loved so much, totally obliterating anything that I could have salvaged. I know I should have heard when the castle walls split open, but I was engrossed in a deep slumber. I was negligent. I paid no attention.
When I awoke, all I saw was the man, and I missed the beast that had replaced him. In an ignorant daze, I opened my arms, but the man I loved did not exist anymore. Instead, the creature pulled me apart, digging through my chest cavity and rendering it empty. Heartless, bloody, and alone, I wandered from the confines of the palace I had once felt so safe in.
The wasteland beckoned me, and I took it as my home.  

Dear You,


Yes, you. It's me. I have something to say to you, so read it and take heed. You can't tell me that what I'm about to say to you comes as even the smallest surprise, from all the shit I've gone through because of you. There was once when I wrote you a letter, telling you that you found ways to solve almost all of my problems. In this newer letter, an updated version of the other one, I declare that you were the cause of all of those problems, both solved and unsolved.
I want my life back from you. You swallowed it before you even knew me. I still remember, when we were in middle school, and you were one grade above me, passing you in school and trying to catch your eye, sometimes lingering at the end of hallways just to watch you round the farthest corner. I loved you before I even knew you. And you ignored me years before the first time you ruined me.
The first time you broke my heart, you were the first man I ever really thought cared about me as a person. It was a time in my life when I felt like I had absolutely no one, except you. You were always there, squeezing my leg seductively under the table to distract me from my loneliness, pulling me into your lap when I cried, kissing every line of story that I cut into my arms. Do you remember how that ended? Do you remember how you betrayed me? You were sleeping with another guy's girlfriend. You couldn't even leave me for a girl who was less despicable than you.
I pined for you, tried to stand up to you, but always fell short. I cried real tears, all the time, curled up in a ball so many times just trying to banish all those memories of you away. Memories of when you gave me your sweatshirt on the first day we ever talked, simply because you found me crying in a back hallway, and when you sang The Partridge Family's “I Think I Love You” into my ear.
Against my better judgment, I forgave you, let you back into my life in what was almost a friendship. We had a few encounters, like when I interviewed you in a room where her clothes and artwork were tacked up all over the walls. You were twirling a knife around your finger, smiling your most beautiful, crooked smile. My body didn't stop shaking the entire time I was there.
I dated you again, a few months later. This time, I spent most of the relationship in tears. You ignored me, only visited me occasionally, and never answered questions about what activities you'd been engaging in. Once, you came to see me, and all of a sudden, your face went blank and your hand shot out, closing itself around my throat. You lifted me up so that my feet almost did not touch the ground, with a look of nothingness on your face. I wasn't afraid, the entire time. I know it qualified as abuse, but rather than be as terrified as I should have been, I laughed at you. I laughed at you as much as a person can when they have almost no air in their lungs. I think that was what shocked you into dropping me.
You were pathetic. You think that hurting and choking a woman is what makes you a man? You think it makes you tortured and interesting? That's what was hilarious to me. And, isn't it insane, it made me love you even more?
A few weeks later, I found out through a friend of my brothers that you were cheating on me. I left two angry messages on your Facebook wall, but to be truthful, they were halfhearted at best. I said what anyone would want the scorned woman to say. I said what I thought would hurt you least and thrill my feminist friends the most. And then you were gone.
How I missed you so.
You went through a friend, of a friend, of a friend to tell me that you really really wanted to be friends. I had to believe it as truth because of the trouble you went through. I reconnected with you. We dated again. It didn't work out. Again. Big surprise, right? You should have been paid for every time you broke my heart.
And now you're back. You want to be friends again. We only talk, when you talk to me first. You're in my phone as nothing but a number. But I love you still. And I always will. If you had any decency, you would let me go and never talk to me again. If I had any self respect, I would do the same to you, tell you to back off. I guess we're much more alike than I previously thought.