Dynamics

She turned and looked me dead in the eyes


‘Hit me’, she spat, ‘go on, I dare you.’

I didn’t reply, my eyes brushing over her dishevelled appearance in response. She was bright-eyed and clammy, her hairline sweaty from the musty club we had just been in. One strap of her top as falling down her shoulder and her skirt was twisted.

‘You’re too soft. No wonder no one likes to go out with you’, she slurred. We were standing out the front of some overrated underground bar that she had been raving about for weeks now. The brisk evening breeze bit at my skin as I offered her my coat. Throwing it down into a dirty alley gutter she challenged me again. I walked over and picked it up. I wasn’t going to rise to her provocation.

It was the first time I had been out with Cynthia, and she was proving every one of the reasons for my hesitation right. I knew she was a heavy drinker, but I never understood the reasons why she always had unexplained bruises and cuts. Now I did.

‘Do it. I won’t feel it, I swear. I’m magic’, She guffawed.

‘No, you’re drunk.’

She swore at me as she turned to walk away, putting too much momentum into her heel spin and stumbling. I watched her as she straightened and began to slowly walk in the opposite direction.

I always hated going out with people from work. I think it had something to do with the safety of the one-dimensional character I saw. It was as if I ventured outside the work environment with them, I’d see another side to their personalities, and that would be the end, I’d know too much.

I figured there must be something about me, something that invited people to tell me their secrets, to talk and talk until all their problems were off their chests and they could breathe easily again. People would tell me about affairs, broken promises, old flings and new flings, which members of their family they hated, which ones they loved, sometimes a little too much. Cynthia had done the same, punctuated with frequent refills of her glass.

‘You know that guy I was seeing a few months back?’ She asked, ordering a scotch on the rocks. I nodded, racking my brains for any previous conversation which could have mentioned this particular guy. She took a massive gulp and I winced. Her father must have been a violent drunk, if she could down scotch like that.

‘Got me pregnant. Bastard.’ She muttered.

I surveyed her slightly hunched shoulders, like she was carrying the world on her back. I was no longer surprised by anything anyone told me these days. I was immune, even to the greatest horrors of humanity. My silence prompted her to elaborate.

‘All he wanted was a few good nights, I guess.’ She spat bitterly. ‘He said his wife was always too tired, what with their baby and all. Can you believe that? I was a dirty mistress. A dirty mistress, wrecking some lovely girl’s life, some innocent baby’s family’, she ran her fingers through the curls of her dirty blonde hair.

I wondered when it would be appropriate to leave. I was tired. Across the bar a young could sat laughing. I loved watching the dynamics between couples. These two were drawn to each other, each hanging onto what the other was saying, giving each world weight through their attentiveness. Cynthia continued to talk, and I only half-listened while observing these two. Being a closet sentimental, I appreciated the way their styles complemented each other, as if they unintentionally coordinated even their outfits according to their collective moods. I wondered how long they had spent together for such an intuitive awareness to develop. Everything they did was centred around the other, and even when they looked around, and eventually left, they were both so aware of the others presence.

I looked back to Cynthia. She was on her eighth drink, a heroic effort for 10pm, and she had already passed though the tumultuous dynamics of her family, her childhood pets and their untimely deaths at the hands of her brother and her sisters’ teenage mayhem. I had had enough. Standing up, I suggested we try somewhere else out, intending to walk her to a taxi and drive myself home.

Smiling and giggling goodbyes at the bartender, her composure turned suddenly as soon as we stepped out into the gutter, and I could feel the resentment prickling towards me, as if it were my fault she said so much. Like I had drawn it out of her through painful torture and extraction. Like now I would no longer be able to look at her the same way again. That was true, but I was so used to it by now that I could so easily disguise my disinterest.

She turned and I could see a glimmer of fear in her eyes. Deep down she was still a child, a child in a world that was and always had been a little too big for her to handle.

That Summer

It is something to behold, the love one human can have for another. I wonder if you had known this, would things have been different? Time may never tell. But of course, you lived almost solely on the hope that there was such a love, one that could both create and destroy. That is the love people write about. That is the love that you believed would complete you. Did it?


Your naivety astounded me at times. You were so sharp tongued and aware of the little things that made up the bigger picture. Tell me, did you ever catch a glimpse of that bigger picture? From where I stood, I doubt you ever could have. Did you know I was sceptical at the best of times? I wondered if you were just fantasy, and the things you knew about the real world just made your imaginary world real, the evidence you gave for it sounded like a filtered version of reality, in the context of your own imagination.

My doctor quoted Henry Miller to me today, 'The surest way to get over a woman is to turn her into literature'. I wonder if he knew how much I desired you that way. To turn you into a tangible, obtainable object, on which my desire could rest and smoulder. You never allowed me to do such a thing. I could never understand your refusal of my love. Who did you think you were to govern who one should or should not love? I gave you my heart, again and again. I gave you my soul. I gave you so much of myself that I became like a shell, abandoned on the shore, its smooth curves chipped, built up with calcifications and scum. My love, I tore myself apart for you.

There is always something in the way with us. There is never clear ground. Never an even playing field. It is a perpetual struggle for supremacy. Sometimes I wondered what you were thinking, all those times when despite us being together, you never spoke. You would pretend to read, but I knew better. I would watch you. Were you aware how ardently I would stare? How hungrily I would take in your features, burning them onto my heart? Was it then that I should have noticed your lack of reciprocation? You would take too long to turn a page, or read the same sections over and over. Was it me? I knew you felt uncomfortable with the feeling that another could have such intimate knowledge of yourself. Was it because you feared that under scrutiny you would rise as inadequate? That if another got too close they could pick you to pieces, as wilder beasts do to carcasses. For an age I was desperate to know why you would shut yourself off. My insecurities told me I was overbearing, my sense of hope said you were just a pitiful soul lost in your own imagination, my imagination invented a terrible and tragic past as an excuse. None of these, however, provided your explanation. Could you have even given one?

At first your mysticism intrigued me, attracting me in a fascinating way, but as time went on, more and more of the things that drew me to you began to draw blood. Your eyes, like swinging doors, one minute so transparent you could see to the very depths of your soul, the next an impenetrable fortress. I dreamt about your eyes, the night after we met.

It was mid-February and I hadn’t seen you in an age. You had escaped to your parent’s house for the summer. You had left so suddenly that I never had time to come with you. Was that your intention? Were you sick of my presence already? I thought I’d surprise you with one of those romantic gestures that I thought so much of, and you so little. Perhaps because it was too subtle, perhaps too commonplace, too pedestrian. It was an extremely hot day, don’t you remember? You were in your parents pool, reading. You didn’t see me right away, so I stood in the shadows, watching you. Occasionally you would lick your lips and purse them together, or float your legs in a pseudo-aqua-aerobic move unsuitable for the shallows you were in.

Your nails were a bright colour, matching that strapless bikini top you were wearing. The high waisted bottoms, so childishly torn on the seams, did nothing to dispel an image so alike Humbert Humbert’s Lolita, and for a second I felt what it would have been like for poor Humbert. To see that skin, the unknown innocence. You would never be able to fathom the strong desire I had at that moment to take hold of you, explore that innocence and to claim it for my own. I came and sat beside you in the water, leaning in to kiss your cheek. You vaguely acknowledged me with a searching hand looking for mine. You did not look up as I squeezed your fingers, but from that moment as I watched you your posture was less relaxed, your concentration more forced and the page never turned. I asked you what the matter was. You brushed me off with a brief ‘Nothing’. How was I to know then what went through that mind of yours?

The next time you spoke it was to vaguely mention some new fact that your scatterbrained readings had procured. I hungrily absorbed your appearance, your dark hair glistening from the water’s light reflection, your feet prune-like and waterlogged. If I looked closely I would see that you hadn’t expected to see anyone, your eyebrows had grown out, you’re hair was scraped up in a messy elegance and you weren’t wearing make-up, and probably hadn’t for weeks. It was at this moment that I found myself loving you, but I was still so uncertain, so I kept quiet.

I was always your girl

I remember it vaguely, mixed up with the rest of the story that is us.


‘Don’t you ever think about it? What it would be like to be my girl?’
I said nothing.

I was always your girl.

The night you offered me everything you had to give. I said no.
2 AM in May is a very cold time. Colder than you’d think. I had blonde hair then.
For the next two years I thought about that night.

My best friend looked at me shrewdly, ‘You’re falling for him, aren’t you?’
I blushed.

Together and not, with others and not, you were the one I kept coming back to.
I tried to brush it off as a teenage crush. It wasn’t eternal. I didn’t love you. You, who offered yourself to me in the weakest hour of the night, did not mean it.
Yet I didn’t want to see you moving on.

Before everything, we were friends. We worked better as friends. Those nights you’d come over and we’d sit and talk about everything, making jokes only we would understand. We had the same sort of humour.

When you’d leave, I’d go out to your car with you. Standing in the middle of the road, I’d look into your eyes and see a glimmer of something. I’d look away, scared.
I was always scared with you. I wanted so much, but the stars said something different.

One night I kissed you.

We used each other to validate ourselves. But I would always be the one to step back, to turn away, and to go home. I had brown hair then.
‘If you touch me I will rip out your spinal cord and use it as a whip.’
You just laughed.
I was serious.

I denied the existence of love, in favour of time and space. If I felt love, I would want too much.

You said you were sorry, that I deserved to be treated much better. One again you humbled yourself for me. We left for our own lives.

I saw you the other day, after over a year. I greeted you as the old friend you are, with a joke only you would understand and wild red hair.

It was different, this time around.
‘I think I’m on the way to knowing who I am. The visceral part, anyways’, you mumbled, looking straight forward at the road. I thought the same.
You bought me old books. I said I would pay you back.
I forgot.

The night before you left you walked me out to my car. I held your hand.
We stood in the middle of the road. I kissed your cheek; you wrapped your arms around me.
‘I’ll miss you when you’re gone’.

The roads are always quiet there.
You left this old town, as did I.

I cried at the train station when I realised you were gone, once again.
‘I know you love him,’ said my best friend.
‘Not in that way. I’m not in love with him. I just love him.’
‘I know. And he knows. You’ll see him again.’

And through it all, I have always been your girl.

Good day, fine ladies and gentle... man.

(This is a talk that I actually did for college. I just found the notes and thought I should share)

I...(pause for effect) Like poetry. I like Poe. I like Edgar Allan Poe. I think he is probably one of the greatest poet slash writers of all time, so my talk is therefore about why you should like him, probably not as much as me, but a whole lot. And why you should find out more about him.

He wrote in the preface to 'The Raven and Other Stories',
'With me, poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion, and the passions must be held in reverance: they must not - they can not at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations.'

Which I think is just fabulous, and rather true. But now, I shall tell all you uneducated cottonheaded ninnymuggins a little more about Edgar Allan Poe's glorious life.

He was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1809 to itenerant actors, and brought up in England from 1815-20. He went to the university of Virginia from 1926-7, and take this, gossip girl, was expelled for not paying his gambling debts. Bam.

Now, don't think badly of him when I tell you this, but he did marry his cousin. Who was 13. But he loved her madly and she did die from consumption, AKA tuberculosis in 1847. So it kind of evened itself out in the end. He wrote the poem Annabel Lee for her, which if you haven't read it, is one of the most beautiful poems ever. Seriously. It makes me cry.

But other than his magnificent writing skills, he was a bit of a grump and a recluse and a booze-hound. Not many people liked him all that much. But I do. And that's what matters.

He died in 1849, which was a shame, but he basically did drink himself to death. He was found in a terrible state at an inn, and died shortly after that. In my head I seem to imagine that the 'terrible state' meant that he was found on a highway, covered in chicken feathers and near-death. I'm probably wrong.

So basically, Edgar Allan Poe is a fantastic poet, who you should really know more about. I did take his collected works with me to see Inception. Read Dream Within A Dream and you'll understand why. And there you are. Edgar Allan Poe.

And then I took a bow.

It was glorious.

The one you see with your eyes closed

'Lights always look better when you're standing in the dark, don't you think?' She asked me, her head sideways, as if to gain a different perspective.

That's how I see her in my mind, burnt onto the inside of my eyelids, so even in the dark, I see that image of her. Her sitting on a mis-matched jumble of all the jackets, cardigans and shirts we could find in the backseat of my car. Her mousy brown hair had a curl in it from wearing it up all day, she'd taken it out so the length could shield her neck from the brisk evening. Her arms, still white though it was mid-summer, were wrapped loosely about her knees. Her floral dress was crinkled. In the bright of the even stars you could just see the freckles on her little snub nose. She had un uneven mouth, a little too large for her face, and eyes that could overwhelm the sea. She had a terrible habit of unconsciously biting her top lip so her lower teeth would flash white against her dark lips, and she would cock her head to the side as she questioned you, eyes searching each minute expression on your face for something unspoken.

She always had this way with words. She would make me agree to something before I had even realised the depth of what had been said. She would look at me and somehow I felt like she knew what I was thinking. Like in her experience of accumulating the hearts of men she had become hyper-sensitive to each momentary tick and thought-process.
I never told her that, it wasn't something that I'd admit, that someone could see more ito the depths of me than my usual guards would allow. It intimidated me. The way she knew things scared me.
I think, in a way, she was more observant than she'd ever let on. When she appeared to be off in another world, I think part of her was still around, listening and watching, peering into each soul, searching for truth.

We were sitting on what most people would call a cliff, the slightly damp grass trying its best to seep through the layers of jackets we had spread between us and it. The ocean sang out from below, the sky overwhelmed us with its blanketing presence. I played guitar softly, unconsciously moving and flowing with the flow of conversation, shifting subtly from melancholy to staccato, uplifting to desperately, agonisingly sorrowful.

The stars were so bright that night. I was sure that we didn't need the three tealight candles she found in her bag, but we lit them anyway.
'They're mostly to set the mood, really.' She reasoned to herself.
'What sort of mood do you need to set that isn't already here?' I wondered.
She stayed silent, shrugging off the implied condemnation of my naturalist tendancies.
'Why did you have those candles in there, anyway?' I asked.
'I don't know. I think I just collect things that I feel attached to at the moment. I guess I just carry them around with me to make me feel more secure... Or maybe I'm just a terrible hoarder, afraid and unable to let go of anything' she joked, trying to cover the small amount of accidental truth with layers of self-deprecating jest.

I wondered how many more souls she would need to take before she could breathe freely.

I felt thin around her. Stretched. Like butter scraped over too much bread. I think to her I was so much, and in myself, became so little.

I lay facing the stars, and they facing me. My eyes were irresistably attracted to the brightest of them. Where was the moon? I wondered. The shallows of my mind stifled the thoughts that would one day break us apart. I resisted them with all of my being. Just for tonight, I reasoned. I'll deal with them in daylight.

But somewhere inside, a small voice wondered if I only looked so good to her because she was so lost in her own night.

And we dreamt through the Saturns of an unkempt night. She, content to be so close. And me, I wasn't so sure anymore. The guitar kept playing its own eternal song, unheeding to any thoughts of mine.

And soon enough, silence overtook our thoughts and words as we lay there, serenaded by nothing but eternity.