And there it is - some few encircled maps and a suitcase - remaining by the door and seemingly gazing like a dead man’s eye exhorting this lusty desire to leave.
People are always talking about leaving, always speaking of freedom. Freedom to live. Freedom to speak. Freedom to love and die and do certain things. But what is his? The freedom he never spoke a word of yet there he stands, car keys in hand and passport on the other, with still no words to avert the incompleteness lingering in his guts.
There was two ways to go about it. At both it was sure he’d balk.
Playing the Game of Cycle
It’s nights like this that are the hardest. Nights when we’re supposed to be nestled up on the sofa watching the game while I (secretly) watch you take pulls of your beer. I always loved that image: the wave in your throat and the silhouette defined by the perfect lines of your face illumed from the silver of the tv screen. But that visual (of you) is not about to come into being. Not any more. Not since you’re, well, not present. So here I am instead, compensating for your role with the unconsumed bottles you had left in my fridge.
The game has been eventful and gets more and more so the deeper it surges in the night. A barnburner, you would say. Or, as I’m sure, had already said since you’re not one to miss it. I yell curses at the strayed passes, missed chances and at every cheap shot thrown. But there’s a calmness in the knowing that you’re out there looking at the same stream of images as I. And I guess it’s still the wire I trace back to you that rests my longing. A folly I take shelter in. So I watch it as you watch it, but together we’re missing.
Tomorrow, the team comes back to play yet another match, scheduled against your number one team this time. So I’ll play a game of cycle; and perhaps bring out the spirits too.
Lazy curtains soaked with pale, orange lights. White walls, white sheets and white ceilings. The rest of the room was painted in shadows. She pulls her eyelids over her eyes.
The dark air was silent. Not a clock spoke of its seconds. Yet somehow, something echoes vociferously. You. You, she hears. Her bony fingers dug onto the covers, clenching it like sand. She tries not to listen but the words are echoed inescapably inside her head. A bead of tear dragged itself a path to her ear, leaving behind speckles that sparkled orange from the filtered street lights. You, she still hears. You and not and her; her, not and you. The three words, out there, for her, they scatter, strung together to only mean one thing. She suckers air to her lungs but explodes into breaks of weeping exhales, disappointing her vehement desire of holding it in. Of holding everything in. Her heavy gasps now pervades the cold, dark air. It had been long since they filled it.
Neons
There was a girl. She never had many friends. She would find a group of loose girls, drink, party and later ditch them all on the same night. Sometimes, she leaves them in the morning. But that only happened if she met them on a Friday, or a Saturday, to waste away the weekend. If she (ever) liked their company, she would join them for a couple nights. But never more than two — that was her only implemented rule.
This was the cycle she had gotten used to since middle school. Except then, they drank redbulls and coke that they bought in cases from the corner store, way before she had most of the kids from her academy swallow their first alcohol. The girls were too much for her to deal with. She learned very early on that the drama attached to every single shrieky girl was commensurate to the size of the breasts attached to their chests, so she had always went out and found a boy whenever she needed someone to talk with. Although she always never had much words to say and drank more than she ever talked, she connected her miseries through the emotionless sex that came easily that way.
That night was one of those. She sat at the bar with her third glass of whiskey, glared at every boy she noticed eyeing her. She hated it — the coquettish looks and flirty talks. It’s all sugarcoatings, she thought. All very unnecessary. She preferred when a man buys her a round of her long-time lover and tells her to come with - just like that. Like a hooker getting hitched late in the night. It was easier for her that way. But she was in no luck. A great slab of the crowd was in attendance to some college aftergame party and boys who brought nothing but stupid, unoriginal pick up lines she only rolled her eyes to. Disgruntled, she dropped her sight to the empty glass that sat in front of her. She imagined a man who gets up and drags her out almost brusque in manner. No words. No introduction. They disappear past the neons floating in the dark air.
You can be my star, I said to Jake.
What?
I said you can be the star.
Oh, for that short you’re directing?
I fixed a stare on his face to keep the blank on mine, focused solely on the intervals of my exhales. His jaws clenched slightly. Scarcely. Almost too instantaneously. I blinked and suddenly I was watching the sides of his lips curl upward, eyes gleaming.
Yeah, Truce.
