Diary entry One: September 27, 1997
She came to me again last night, my dear Amanda.
I awoke, as usual,
to find her sitting
statue-still in my big black leather arm chair by
the window. I tried
to remain just as still,
to not even alter my breathing, to do nothing to
alert her to my
consciousness, but her sensitive
senses picked up on a new smell-- the smell of my
fear. I do not fear
that she will hurt me (her
love for me rivals mine for her) but I sometimes
worry that she will
tell me that she is not
ever coming back; if that were the case, I would
rather die then hear
her say the words. I wonder
whether she speaks to me while I am sleeping, if
she tells me her
secrets, if she shares with me
her dreams. No matter, for despite my efforts,
she comes over to my
bed and waits by my side
until I feign a slow waking and let her into my
bed. She always wants
for me to hold her, and of
course I always do. I can resist her so rarely,
save for the subtle
offer that she never speaks.
This time she did not rise, but simply waited
for me to pull back the
covers and slide
over to give her space to lay. She melted
against me, her hands
crossing at the wrists behind
me, her strong arms pulling me so close that my
ribs wince in pain and
I wheeze for new breath.
She does not understand her strength in
comparison to mine, that one
unexpected punch could knock
my head from my shoulders. It is a part of her
new beauty, the
innocence, and I do not want it
to change. She smells still of sweet, baby
powder and fresh rain. I
expect this to fade from
her, yet it is heavier tonight then it seemed
during her last visit.
Her skin more soft, her
eyes more wide. Wild brown hair, more frizzy
then it is curly, pulled
back form her face by tiny
child-size barrettes, one on each side of her
face. Tonight it seemed
to be a blue horse and pink
rabbit doing the job; this made me smile. She
felt my mouth change
and looked up at me, her face
tilted against my pillow, half her beauty lost in
shadow. I stared
down into her eyes, deep
brown, almost black, and and wet like pools. I
saw the whole of
myself reflected inside her. It
took all my good sense to hold back my tears.
She spoke no words to me last night, and stayed
no longer then a few
hours in my arms. I
can't say when she left for I slept soundly
through it. Nights of her
visits are dream- free and
easy on me; I wake refreshed and numb, as if the
day will not only not
hurt me, but that it will
also not touch me at all. The thought occurred
to me that she may be
taking a piece of my soul
with her each time she leaves, and I figured it
was hers to take from
the start. There was no
fighting her, her love, or her wishes. I am not
sure what it is she
wants from me, why she
comes to me so rarely any more, why she speaks
less and less. Once
she told me, long ago, that
I would never understand the life for which she
was destined. She
always made it sound as
though she knew her fate and that she were meant
to be something not
only greater then myself,
but greater then all comprehension. The words
she said often hurt me,
but I would joke back to
her that her line of thought was the same of
Lucifer before he fell.
Teeth bared and eyes shining, she would only
smile.
How can I even think of speaking to anyone of
this? None of my other
friends ever
trusted Amanda in the first place, none of them
understood how I could
miss her so when she
left me. I would cry to them, and they would
patronize me. They would
pretend to mourn with me
but their eyes gave away their honesty. 'Forget
her,' their eyes
said, the way they sat
half-hunched in worn disbelief. Her passing did
come as a shock,
after all. The way she spoke,
the way she carried herself, and that nonsense
talk of greater things,
had nearly convinced even
my hateful friends that she was invincible. They
had never seen her
cry, or fought to keep the
pills out of the house. Had never watched her
writhe and wince and
moan at night. They had
simply never known her.
And so now, when she has come back to me, from
what apparently was
not the end, for what
is obviously the fulfillment of her destiny...
who can I turn to for
strength? How can I ask
anyone to share my joy, my worries, my passion?
The way my body burns
when she holds me! There
is no parallel to the fire I feel between my legs
when her fingers
dance across my bare skin,
when her lips brush against my own, when she sits
like a vision from
heaven at my window with
the light of the moon painting the universe onto
her face. I could
not think of being with
another woman, to settle for the cheap pleasure
of lustful sex, to let
anyone lesser then my
Amanda give me love. I cannot even touch myself;
I feel too dirty.
It's shameful, it is not
right, especially since I know she has not really
left. When I
thought she had died, it seemed
an eventuality to release my body of the tight
tense agony; now I know
I can wait for her to do
it for me. She makes a promise with her fingers
that soon she will
love me, a promise I am
aching for her to keep.
I thought of talking with my mother once, of
asking her if she
thought I was crazy,
hallucinating. But she should never know. It
was her and only her
that accused me of having
Amanda in my life as a 'rebellion', a temporary
phase to unsettle my
grandparents and the stuffy
Christian family of her new husband. How could
she! To imply that my
love were false! If she
could only understand... but no one really did.
At least my friends
accepted the idea of the
relationship and did not question my motives.
They were against her,
but not her gender. They'd
seen enough girls get fed up with men recently to
almost be proud of
me for finding a girlfriend.
My mom, however, would have been happier if I'd
pierced my nipples and
tattooed my face. No, I
cannot talk to her about my lover's return.
At first Amanda was coming to me in the late
evening, when I was
tired but not exhausted,
and aware enough to be startled, scared, and
skeptical. I assumed her
a part of mourning, or
impending insanity. I was so troubled by losing
her that I'd taken a
sabbatical of undecided
length, shut out most of the people I knew (I
didn't open their
letters, cards, or gifts, and
left answering machine on to scan my calls), and
taken up smoking
again- a habit which Amanda
had only shortly before weaned me off. I had had
one dream of her
already where she rose up
from my fiery floor with bloodied plastic angel
wings to ask my help
in finding some Rocky Road
ice cream... I woke up crying, convinced my room
would be charred and
black and that she would
be very upset with my for not helping her. Ever
since I've kept a
pint of Rocky Road in my
freezer. I figured it couldn't hurt.
When she first showed, she was in the kitchen,
Rocky Road in one
hand, a big spoon in the
other. I fell to the floor, knees buckled under
me, hand covering my
mouth to hold back a
scream. She smiled and pulled a chair from the
round kitchen table
for me. "Sit," she's said,
and turned to grab another spoon. Slowly, I
regained my feet and
stumbled into the chair. I
was gaping at her, watching her move. I expected
for a ghost to be
translucent, flowy and not in
such great control of their movements, but Amanda
appeared to be no
different then she had been
before.
"This isn't real," I said aloud, to myself.
After all, she wasn't
really there. "I must
be dreaming. I want to wake up. This isn't
funny." She looked at
me, patience in her calm
eyes, and started eating. She extended a
mountainous spoon-full of
ice cream at me. "I can't
eat that; it's in the freezer." I tired to
convince myself, to use
any means of dream control I
could imagine to make it stop. It hurt to much
to believe that she
could be there for fifteen
minutes while I cat nap, but that she was no
longer a part of the rest
of my life. If she had
wanted to stay a part of my life, I figured she
wouldn't have taken so
many pills instead of
finding a away into my subconscious.
Amanda pushed the spoon against my lips; I cried
out in horror when I
felt the painful
cold on my mouth. I expected to have woken with
rain pouring in
through the open living room
window, but nothing changed. I licked the ice
cream off my lips, I
looked across the table at
her, I got up and slapped her across the face.
She didn't move, her
head didn't turn. She
stand up and hit me back. All she did is smile,
and I knew it was
really her.
