Silence.
For Liz, who chose not to understand before, refused to understand later, and dies a small death everyday. I wish it was not so, but it was never my choice.
***** ***** *****
What is silence? I'm not sure I knew, I'm not sure I'll ever know for sure, but in that one moment of fate that brought me here. I'm alone, desperate for contact so that I'm writing this, this journal of sorts, a fiction if you will. I'm eager for silence, you see. My life has been nothing ever but noise, chatter and music. Never true silence. I suppose in retrospect I should have searched for it, but my seeking nature had nothing to do with what happened to me. I fell in love, and I don't see what that has to do with the silence I sought. Perhaps the peaceful aspect to the lonely quiet had to do with quelling that revolting organ of the mental ideal of 'heart', but I can see no connection.
***** ***** *****
Repetition is the bane
of all mental processes
nearest failure and hope
that cannot thrive without
any world to interact.
***** ***** *****
So I was in love. It was a slow progression from 'Wow, she's cute' to 'I think I really like her' sort of thing, developing from a crush to a tentative friendship, but I never really approached her as a possible partner. I did later, I should be grateful that I finally relieved myself of that secret. So we became friends after discovering a mutual interest, and soon, mutual friends also. I never touched her until afterwards, as far as physicality is concerned, and any contact between us was initiated by her.
Later, I told her, and she rejected me, saying that she simply did not return the interest. I had suspected, and never really believed otherwise, due to her having a boyfriend previously, even if she was not then currently engaged in any romantic relationship. I had expected the rejection, and so was not taken as hard as possible, yet she extended her friendship further to me, adn I was content with that for a while. A long while, it must have been two years that we spent as friends, and while I finally realised my affections for her as beyond attraction to her body and mentality, but more to her mind and personality, and dubbed them love.
I had been in love before, and I think that perhaps I always was with her, just in varying stages of denial or ignorance. When the tepid emotion burst into full power within my breast, I did not reject it as I should have, but accepted it, and deemed it possible to ignore for the sake of our friendship. She touched me more, and more often, and I became comfortable with her phjysical forms of affection, but only as a friend. It really didn't occur to me that she didn't touch anyone else as frequently as I. I know it now, of course, after having a seeming eternity to ponder the memories, when I did not scream and rage at the walls of murky clouds and endless grey fields in my mind, interspersed with white and black shapes.
So then I was in love, and she did not know it. I have not as of yet told her, but in secreted dreams an notes that she will never see, and hopefully never will find. I was content to be her friend, indeed I think her best friend on some accounts, and it was tolerable, and happy for us for one reason - that she never showed anything other than friendship towards me.
Until just that once. And that was enough to destroy everything.
***** ***** *****
Her eyes
brown and thoughtful
bore down hard witness
to the monster I became.
She rebuked words
with tearing eyes
and a smiling mouth
that spoke forgiveness
yet confirmed sin.
And I wonder
why my chest bleeds
and I cannot breathe
as she sighs
and asks for friendship.
And years pass
yet I live
beside her
a friend
her very best
because no one other
loves her so.
***** ***** *****
It had begun simply enough. I, as her dear friend, was to accompany her and her family on a college planning trip, visiting several colleges within the city area. A simple, normal activity for college-bound high school students anticipating a great deal of work in order to get into college. What I didn't expect was a strange advance from her.
I think perhaps she had forgot, or chose not remember, how I had felt years before, and thus had assumed me to be 'over' her. Nothing could be farther from the truth besides hatred, but I had concealed my emotions and we were friends. Very close friends, but I still felt like we weren't really speaking. We talked, but we did not communicate our true feelings to each other. But I was still content to be by her side as her friend.
On this trip, we shared a bed. I had expected nothing of it, being used to sharing a bed with a sibling or other friends, and was more than willing to hold her as she went to sleep, as she requested. My heart leapt at the closeness between us, but I firmly ignored it and attempted to sleep.
Until she kissed me. It was a brief, but deliberate movement while she was half asleep, and as she lapsed into unconscious dreaming, I could neither move nor comment on that strange action. I was unsure of the circumstance. Did she feel something for me? Did she think I was someone else? What were her emotions, and why did she do it?
I did not sleep well that night, despite our proximity.
When I questioned her the next day, she had mumbled something about being lonely, and said she regretted it, and was very sorry. She hoped that it would not be held between us, and against her. She still wanted to be friends.
I think it was denial. I hoped it was, because then once she recovered herself, she might accept me. Again I resolved to do nothing untoward unless she started it. That did not keep me from pushing the issue until we fought.
We argued awfully one week, due partially to the tension from that incident, and spiralling out in complexities I do not want to imagine the fullness of, spawning from a ignored email message on my part, and thus a war online between us. The irrationality of email messages began to wear at me, until I finally lashed out at her, and sent her on a guilt trip over my supposed suffering.
It hurt, to fight with her, although I acknowledged the necessity. She had snapped at me and withheld any explanation, and that hurt enough to begin the argument. I figured it was best to get it out now, to resolve how we would deal with future fights as friends. But it hurt, even when I knew she didn't mean what she said. I can imagine it hurt her as well.
We did apologise, and made up as friends. I withdrew my physical affections from her, as she had stated angrily that they made her uncomfortable. I guess that was due to our classmates' gossiping nature regarding our friendship. Almost everyone, except her, believed her to be my lover, even though we both denied it, despite my ardent wishes otherwise.
We never truly resolved the issues that our fight had brought up, though, and while I looked for a good opportunity to speak with her alone and in depth, it never arose until about a month later, during a vacation from school.
***** ***** *****
Flaming agony
wrought by pixels of black
and red
that wept at the sight of such violence
as lay on a screen
each frameshot
a denial of belief
a careless insult
in whose arbitrary path
ran through many men
and killed them
with the letters of poison
emblazoned on it's tip.
Then two voices
and the final covenant
replace torn skin
and fragile hearts
with bonds of caring
and emotion that lay between
rightly so
friends
or lovers.
***** ***** *****
I had hypothesised for over a month upon what had occurred that night in Boston. I supposed that in all likelihood, she had thought me someeone else, likely her most recent crush, who also was one of her close friends. I secretly hoped in my ignorance of psychology that she had known it to be me, and simply was having a difficult time accepting that new part of her personality and sexuality. Thus my theory of denial was in fact plausible, since the matter of her sexuality had never been truly explored, due to lack of opportunity and a distinct aversion to experimentation on her part.
As we approached vacation, she came to me, timid as if afraid of rejection. Perhaps I read too much into that. But she invited me to her house over the vacation week, and I accepted eagerly. I hoped that at least we would be finally able to talk out the fight, if not anything more.
I realised soon after that the fashion in which we had been relating, perhaps even our relationship entire, had changed ever so slightly since we made up over the fight. It was evident in tiny things, small changes in physical behaviours and routine greetings, and in deepened conversations. She no longer shied from greeting me closely, and indeed initiated any physical contact between us. We spoke of real things, or her emotions and what had truly occurred to make them, and I believe that perhaps we bonded at the level we should have long ago, the fight acting as a catalyst for the development of our friendship. But I dislike the usage of friendhisp, because I do not think it truly was, any longer. The deference we gave each other, the respect and comfort was evident of my cahnge in perspective regarding her. I no longer thought of her as merely my friend, with hidden feelings, but instead acknowledged my emotions, and treated her as my lover, my partner. It did not mean for phsyical displays of carnality as some are wont to do, for that is not my way. It did not mean that she even noticed the change. But I had changed. And when she asked me over, I dared to hope.
***** ***** *****
A lone figure
once rode down a highway
head held high
relflecting blue skies
on black lens.
A lone figure signaled
and turned the bike
to pass down an asphalt road
across a black intersection.
A lone figure,
hopes in heart,
was struck down
by a unseeing black car.
A lone figure
flew across concrete
leaving a trail of crimson pain
and the world became black.
***** ***** *****
Now I am here. I do not remember anything past the accident, I suppose I am in a coma. I don't want to wake up, unless she's there. For me, this is relief. I don't have to pretend, I don't have to hope, just simply be. And even that will cease soon enough. I can splinter personalities off to entertain myself, I suppose, just as I gave myself an inferioritry complex so I could work harder, and made myself depressed so I could draw.
I fantasise sometimes that I am in a hospital bed, unseeing and broken, my face bruised and bloody from where it hit the gravel, and arm broken from when I landed. And she comes to see me, a worried expression in her brown, beautiful eyes. She does not cry, but holds my hand, then leaves once again. But such is vanity. I am lost here, and while she may come to visit more forlorn, broken shell, she does not hold my hand, nor whisper the sweet nothings that might awake me.
But I do not wish to awaken. In my more honest moments, I know she does not and could not care for me as I do her, all evidence to the contrary ignored easily, for there is not so much. She does not love me, but as a friend. This may well be a good resolution, for I would have pressed the issues sooner or later, and invoked another fight until we finally separated ourselves due to quarreling, and my unwelcome emotions for her. I will leave her life, dead and at peace as I was promised to be when I was born, and shall trouble her no further. She shall know the tragic end of a dear friend, who once professed love but then realised how silly that was and became her best friend instead. All shall be well.
I hope.
***** ***** *****
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