I can do this now.
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Cleaning out my external hard drive this afternoon and stumbled upon pages and pages and pages of old writing that I’d mostly forgotten about. I originally wrote and posted this on April 19, 2007 on a blog that no longer exists. Reposting because I’m feeling nostalgic.
PS. This is about Chris. We’ve come a long way in the last 6 years.
His hands fit the curves of my waist as if I was sculpted specifically for him to touch me.
Wait. I think I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
So there’s this guy with chocolate eyes and cinnamon skin whose heartbeat cradles me to sleep at night. Sometimes I find myself sinking into the creases of his smile, melting into the contours of his bones. The sound of his laughter reverberates in my pulse, and often I’m caught by the mere inflections of his speech. I’m so attracted to the talent that pours through his fingertips. As if there’s a life force hiding in the creases of his knuckles, sleeping in the wrinkles of his fingertips, merely waiting to be spilled onto any surface placed in front of him. There are times when I just wish he would glide his palms along my flesh and mold me into something better or something beautiful. Something worth him.
Lately I’ve been a little captivated with this life that lies tangent to my own. Suddenly I’m at an intersection with someone whose passion is racing fiercely against my own, and the heat is so intense that I’m almost intimidated to continue. I’m afraid that eventually one of us will burn out and leave the other trailing behind. There are some afternoons that I’ll spend taking naps in his arms and breathing in the faint scent of his skin pressed against my own, and I wonder if those fragments of contentment are worth their inevitable end. You know, realistically speaking. But I guess that’s the whole point of life. Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, right? Not that this is love, though, this is just an introduction. The quote just fits.
Anyways, I guess this is relevant news because I’ve never been with someone who left me small kisses on the nape of my neck to wake up to. I’ve never been with someone who didn’t talk to me with words thick with charm and dripping with deceit. I just don’t think I’ve ever been with someone worth being with, as terrible as that might sound. Looking back on my pathetic dating past, I wouldn’t take the malice back. And though I’m not even “with” this guy, whatever that’s supposed to mean, so far he’s the only one who’s felt worth the time I’ve been spending with him.
It’s been a fast life with heavy days and hours that stretch from early in the morning to late at night, but I’ve been happy. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I’ve been feeling a little lonely recently.
Loneliness is no stranger to me. It comes to visit from time to time, when the ghost of your body disappears from my sheets, when the heat from your skin dissipates into the air. It crawls into bed with me, traces the goosebumps along my skin, creeps and settles under the folds of my blanket. It is a coldness that seeps right into my veins.
There are days where your absence is nothing but a passing thought. And there are moments, like this moment, where your absence is a weight that sits heavily on my chest. I wonder, where are you? Are you happy where you are? Do you think about me during the quiet moments of your days? Do you feel my absence late at night? Do these words reach out to you and find their way into your lap, do they fill the space between us like a bridge across the distance?
I grow weary of missing you.
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I live with a strange fixation on my mortality. Images of my death break through my waking moments, visceral, flashing like distant memories from a life previously lived.
While driving across the Bay Bridge I can see my car fishtailing in the rain, careening over the rail and plummeting into the depths below. I feel the water stabbing at my skin like a million shards of glass, feel it as it engulfs and squeezes all trace of oxygen from my lungs. I can see rescue workers pulling my body from the shores of the bay, see it thick and swollen from days immersed in salt water. I see them retrieving vestiges from the wreckage, see my journal streaked with blotches of ink that once formed words.
While walking home I can see myself being attacked from behind, feel a knife or a bullet dig deep into my abdomen. I see myself collapsed on the ground and clutching my open wound; I feel the blood hot and viscous through my fingers like wax. I hear myself struggling to cry for help, hear the words sputter, choke and spit from my throat. I watch my life paint the concrete in shades of crimson red.
In my apartment I see myself coming home to a stranger waiting for me in the darkness. I feel his weight bear down upon me, see his eyes behind the ski mask. I hear the pounding on the walls - the angry sound of my body forcefully thrown - I feel the bruises as they collect deep beneath my skin.
On the Muni I hear a loud crack and see the explosion from the outside. I see the mushroom cloud of smoke and flames, feel the split second of heat searing the skin off my bones until there is nothing left to feel. I see the 6 o’clock news reports, hear details of the attack. My name is one in a laundry list of names; our loved ones cry and express their grief to the press.
I can hear the eulogies at my funeral, see the tears that streak my loved ones’ faces. I hear them sharing anecdotes of our shared time together - the dinner checks we split, the glasses of wine we cheered, the distances of time we traveled together as acquaintances, friends, family. I see the procession march quietly to my final resting place, see the flowers delicately strewn across my coffin. I read my obituary in the paper - my life abbreviated into a 250-word side bar.
I live day-to-day with an acute awareness of my mortality; I feel the reality of it in every movement. Images of my death assault my daily thoughts in a manner comparable only to the violence of the death itself; they jolt me awake at night like a low and distant rumble, increasing in intensity as they burrow into my subconscious.
My death has a face; it presents itself to me in many ways.
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