fight

That fight that we had just needed to be fought. The anger that spilled over when you are usually so contained. At last the whiff of honesty. You were wrong, but honest and that is something I can admire. I love you no less for it. I love you.

Wrong about me though. I am not the picture you have of me. I am not the sum of my body and my age. I am the person that you talk with late into the night. I am the passionate conversations. I am all the things we have said that have brought us together. I am my love of literature and my desire to paint. I am not the potential parent of children or the sagging into middle age. I am not my husband's property or my friends' keeper.

Still I am glad about the fight. Our fight. Our tiny moment of bare-faced honesty. It has put distance between us but we are not separated yet and this seems to me a positive step, something that we can grow from, some new life. A shoot when the rest of the tree had shrivelled and was almost spent.

coloured clothing

I resisted the urge to try on a piece of coloured clothing. I have done that for weeks now, ducking into the horrible flourescent glare of the changerooms with my bundle of green or red or blue. You said I might look good in blue. I translated this to mean you would find me more attractive in blue. To tell you the truth I look hideous in colour. It looks like I am a clown. Colour does not suit me. I am better in black. Still I glance at the colourful dresses. She looked so nice in deep green. I imagine you like her because of it.

I walk past the clothing and try nothing on. Last time, and the time before, I sat on the floor of the change-room with a green shirt, a blue dress, a red cardigan and I cried. The floor was ripe with the stale socks of a thousand shoppers.

I will not try things on because of you or her. I no longer want you to find me attractive. I will slice off my left breast to draw back a bow. I will shave my head. I will resist the urge to wear makeup. I cannot compete for pretty. All I can hope for is my own kind of fractured beauty. You do not desire me, nor should you, and now, because of this, I will make it impossible for anyone to desire me at all.

naked

I walk naked through the house. The light is on. The door is open. It is the perfect temperature. There is the brush of the velour lounge against my back. There is an honesty in this nakedness. Yes, someone could look in and they would see the outline of a body that was never beautiful, but once, at least, my breasts were firmer than they are today. Once my skin was sallow and firm as if it had been rubbed with olive oil. Once there was less sag and droop than there is now. I walk in my nakedness and it is quite a challenge to realise that it will not get better than this. I can relax into my odd shape and my spiky combativeness. My body is a raised finger, an insult or a challenge. Look at me. I dare you all to look at me. As I settle into the wonderful furriness of the couch and feel the breeze on my skin. My body, just for my own pleasure. My body for me.

Joy

This is a dark period, one of my many moments when sepia turns to burnt umber and all the light dries out of it till what is left is almost black. Even the sensual pleasures become furtive and chore-like. I finish them quickly behind the closed bathroom door. All endorphins fled. There is something amiss in my chemistry. I haven't been writing. My days are a dirge. Nights full of screams and I wake exhausted. I am eating myself with this wasting disease of sadness. I am struggling on without my support team. I have scared my support team. I have raged and plundered and pummelled tears from their eyes. They give me a wary berth. My arms ache for a hug that will no longer be forthcoming. I have spoiled the one good thing I was clinging on to and now I must drift alone.

I am sick of the sadness. Sad sick. A sea of it. I force myself to grin. I listen to the happy music but it only irritates. All I can bare is The Pixies, Syd Barrett, The Breeders, songs that rage or limp along in their confusion. I grow sick of it. I want the turn around now. I want the joy and the running and laughing. I want my friend back. I want our joking back. I want the easiness. I want it back now.

she is more beautiful

she is more beautiful than I am. This is a given. She will always be more beautiful no matter how much weight I lose or if I cut my hair right or if I wear make up like the other girls. I do not find her beautiful but you find her so and I will not compete. There is nothing I can do. I am resigned. There is no way that you will find me beautiful. There is no way that I will find myself beautiful.

I can do stuff. I can write. I can see you, really see you. That is something I have that she will not have, the ability to see past the haze of love and desire to the fragile core of you desperate to be liked.

I like you.

This is what I have. The ability to like you without the idea of love. She is more beautiful but I can sit in my ugliness and look out at the world and see it so clearly that it cuts into my eyes. And I will still like you when love has shriveled and fallen, a bud that abandoned a tree before the flowering. I will like you for your sometimes flawed, always insecure, and often dishonest self. I will like you without fairytales and despite the lies. I will like you forever and with love. Not her kind of abundant love, but a love that is unconditional and filled with clear-sight. I will love you forever.

brain book

Where does it rest in memory, this little misplaced piece of my history. Something only you and I know. Moments that should be filled with regret, which are instead infused with joy, moments that should be joyous coloured by regret. This flawed piece of history linking perfectly with my bad opinion of myself, enhancing it. It bobs to the surface of my life at odd moments. tormenting me. I wonder where it lodges in my brain and whether I should now remove it.

Balloon

Like the books we like, the films we admire, our thing is just a balloon. Something elastic and changeable yet always the same shape. The space it leaves for you or I to fill it with whatever we will make of it. Fragile, in the kind of way a living thing is fragile, shake it too hard and it might burst. Even when it is repaired, it will never be quite as resilient.

I am rough with my things. I let my motorcycle rattle apart, my clothes tear in the wash. There is paint on my shoes. Our thing is ravaged in my hands. I have turned the corners down. I have dropped it in the bath and the pages have swelled. Still it has not burst yet although I have stretched it to breaking point. We breathe life into the structure of it and it is what we bring to it. We are good. Different but good. Our thing will change with each shared breath. The kiss of life perhaps. A kiss, anyway because there is room for some love in the analogy.