This fucking girl. She takes drags from a cigarette the way you feel a gentle hand on your knee under a table, or a hot breath on your neck from a slight chuckle followed by a caress. “I don’t care,” with that tone giving her words a bronzy clang. She looks tired with her arm resting along the spine of the bench, a cigarette dimly smoldering between her fingers as she throws her head back with ease, staring at the sun with blue eyes hiding behind big, stupid sunglasses. So haute. If we were capable of surprising each other anymore then one of us would be sitting alone on this bench. We knew, we know, and we will continue to ignore. It’s always this way, apathy over empathy. Passive instead of aggressive. Spite instead of sincerity. Sinners for saints. Seduction, unsurprisingly.
“You never seem to talk anymore.”
A foot away from Aphrodeity, I drift in and out of our shared bench time, hardly in the conversation because my mind has no leash. My mind greedily persists working every agonizing second. When we speak, I glean every detail about her: the elegance with how she twirls her hand, the cheap t-shirt she thinks makes her look ‘complicated,’ the complete lack of tact, everything I can witness is recorded. She calls is ‘trying to figure her out’ with vehemence each time she catches me. We play little games so frequently I forget who’s winning.
She is absolutely stunning, and each step is laid out: we could grow together, live together, work together and share our lives together, if we weren’t ourselves. Learn to love what we have, slow down. Change. It would be simple, a shift in mental angles. A cute way of being obtuse, she knows my every thought but won’t let me know. I could actually listen to all those cheap clichés from everything I see and hear, attempt to find that one person whom I could truly cherish, the archetypal missing half of my soul that mysteriously ended up in another person’s body. Typically, when the stars align people instinctually accept it as fate, allowing some cosmic motion left over from an explosion that inevitably led to this exact moment with some sort of ‘purpose’ deduced with the right mentality, text, or profound experience that allows them to tap into the nectar of life, an awareness of a higher dimensional being saying, “Go for it bro.” Or am I too ignorant and petty to notice that I have already attained this level, deepening the irony of my loathing. Would I know if she knew? Please don’t excuse me for chuckling.
“Shit.”
While I’m having a porcelain-throne-epiphany, my cigarette has begun to burn my thigh. Wisps of cheap dirty jeans slither through my fingertips as I swat and curse myself. I almost never forget when I am smoking, but each day has its new mysteries. “Zone’n.” I shake my head and swivel to catch her in the corner of my eye, behind my douche-brand sunglasses. The words ooze out of my mouth like tar.
“I’ve never talked much.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“We’re incorrigible.”
“Hmph,” smoke charging out of her nostrils. “We have so much history, but I feel like there’s nothing between us. I’m looking forward.” She’s right though, following the ever-growing track record in my mind of her infallible logics; she and I have known each other for a long time, longer than we should have been together, but not long enough for her to see that. I think. My image blurs when I try to picture her and I ten years from now. With everything telling me this is something I should cherish, preserve, should fight for, I find myself oddly unconvinced. Indecision is a real killer. These are the moments where I say something insightful, a helpful hint from your loving hunk that would cheer her up. She knows what I want to say, what she wants to hear me say, and that we are both going to be disappointed. Honestly, we were close, closer than most people get to fully understanding and accepting another person, true love as some would say. We just never got the second part down.
“I don’t know. It’s what you make of it I guess. You have plenty of options ahead of you.” But the fact is, I can’t find it in me to even try to console her, everything I want to say she already knows; and I knew this would happen, knew that I wouldn’t be able to say the words, knew the outcome before the starting gun, had the shot lined up to sink the 8. Game, set, mismatch. She hates me for this; but I can’t stop my mind, can’t help but see this train wreck from outside the developing story—can’t help but ponder at the perfect pockets of people passing in groups because isolation is synonymous with suicide—but walking contradictions can keep pace anywhere in society. Marriage annulment. McDonald’s Health Menu. Batteries Not Included. On this bench, we sit.
“Que Sera, as they say. I thought you quit smoking.”
“We quit smoking.”
Sincerely sinister sarcastic serendipity, splendid.
Hope I didn’t say that out loud.
“We quit smoking.”
“What’s it matter to you anyways? It’s not like you give a crap when I smoke or don’t smoke. For once, I want you to surprise me. Like you used to.” Right again. I am conflicted with history and her-story, knowing how good things were and comparing them to how good I know they could be, should be. I figure that I’m getting the short end of some stick, bested somehow with exactly what I asked for in front of me but everything I forgot to ask for lacking in damning proportions. I only psychosomatically cared about her. She looks over to me for the first time in our little afternoon bench date, expecting a response behind those designer sunglasses that jeer with my reflected face on them, odd how something cute can change to something condescending so quickly. Sometimes everything steering right makes you veer left. I know what you want me to say, but you should know by now that I wont lie to you. I can’t apologize for how I feel, but I know you want me to. I should be saying this instead of thinking it, but I don’t really care if you know. My cigarette is putting a terrible taste in my mouth, but I keep taking long drags to eat up time.
“We’ve had a lot of fun, but there’s nothing that can change what this is.”
“Tch,” sucking her tongue against her teeth like a mother disappointed in a child, flooding my mind with scenes and fragments of memories that feel as real as the hole in my jeans. That tongue of hers has more sides than most polygons. She continues to mirror my face back at me, pantomiming myself in each eye with gentle shakes of her head, as I continue to mentally recite each and every irate detail about her. This would be truly sad, if we weren’t ourselves. We’re running in circles, which by definition are pointless. The real surprise is that we both predicted the other person’s apathy. New day, new mysteries. Knew you, new me. Out of every memory, sensation, reminder, and fragment of her that I keep in my head, this moment will be my favorite. Break-ups are weird. Fuck you kindly.
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