A grand display of affection is its own kind of vengeance.
“I love so much that I am sick of it”
Abbas Kiarostami, from “A Wolf Lying in Wait; Poems,” published c. 2015
An exquisite, elaborate surprise, just for me. One — that for once in my life — doesn’t gift me guilt. If you have ever thought of me, remember I have thought of you more. This isn’t care; it’s a battle, that I will always win no matter how many times I die.
I accept that life is fleeting, but also, I won’t. I want the superficiality. The glitz, the glamour. The bold and trivial favours. The dramatic displays, the outrageous promises, the exaggerated confessions and the overt pleasing: I want it all.
I want it to seep into the cracks in my bones. The sickly, sweet syrup of overconfidence and frivolity. I want what I should hate, worldly adoration and submission. The exhilarating notion that I can get away with anything.
The musical pause that exists between acting and thinking — I want to prolong that. Stretch it to unimaginable distances, and delay the conscious. Act and not think. Never think. Never bear the weight of my own feelings, actions, imagination, and sadistic mind-wanderings. Distance myself from others' electromagnetic heart waves. They will never reach me. I will feel for no one.
Until then, I will marvel at the secret love language of cutting fruits for your kin — children and children of children. Always in a hierarchy, eldest for the younger and the youngest.
I will trace my pencil veins and anxiously dread the day they will turn blue and my skin will be patchy and tainted.
Perhaps then I will be at peace? I will be adorned in flower crowns and seated at the head of the table. And I will not despise it. I will not pinch my skin or flinch when looked at. My palms will not grow wet when I read my phone screen and anticipate the best and worst rolled in one. I will exist outside a fantasy that I no longer need.
Almost titled: “please don’t read, I’m disgusted in general”, or “no one ever talk to me but also, please talk to me”, or “fuck everyone, but especially me” and more accurately: “the etched heartbreak of waking up early on winter mornings”
