She’s In The Faces Of Strangers
By Matt Staff
It occurred to me last night as I took pause from chasing corners you’re the one that I’ll see in the fading faces of strangers holding doors open, you’re the one that I’ll lust after in daydreams half remembered when I fall back in my chair-snap back to reality, and you’re the one that I’ll never touch with meaning in this life; at least.
Maybe in the next life we’ll come back as eagles in Bolivia to cross paths up in a sky hung with metal birds called 747s off to destinations unknown, with waters definitely shaded deeply toned turquoise.
Maybe we’ll come back as cats, me shabby and crusted with dumpster shavings and expired breads — you washed with lavender, shining black, and agile. Yes, maybe as cats we’ll come back to meet one another by happenstance on a graveled road, past midnight, where the moon glares down dimwitted clarity and the thrill’s the maddened pursuit of an innocent rodent brandishing blocks of cheese taken from our masters homes.
Who knows.
Last night I was sitting outside, on the front porch, in a chair that was raised more than three feet above the ground for once, that didn’t inspire my ass numb for once.
Sam was sitting next to me on the front porch, and Sam was sitting in the chair that educated asses numb. Sam was displeased, and I was amused.
Sam was busy preoccupying himself with the tones, and notes of an artist with a voice that was an angel felled upon earth, imprisoned to sing in a recording studio.
Her name, the angel, the singer, was Norah by the way.
My hands were harsh cold, bluish purple, rendered lifeless.
I could feel the warmth from inside the house just five steps away, seeping through the cracks of the door’s frame, and I wanted no refuge from the warmth. My thoughts were dark with waves of depression that made me feel as if the world were closing in around me, blotting out the sky with jaws of teeth sharpened by the block of truth around my damn neck.
The jaws were causing me to bleed lament over what was never there to be had. Over the girl that was never there to begin with, even though I encouraged myself she was.
I found myself flushed crimson with devastation, and the world that surrounded me was turning ‘round, dancing in a slow motion as I thought of hours spent with friends I loved earlier that evening.
Hours I thought of, when these friends of mine carried on with their bottles of wine, and their conversation centered on preparation for a weekend of anarchy in a cabin buried knee-deep, or deeper in water frozen to white dust.
I thought momentarily about the walks I’d have with myself down lightless, branch covered, pinecone infested trails toward forests where clarity or acceptance might present himself somewhere along the way along the end of an overhanging branch.
I hoped such a guest, clarity or acceptance might present himself this weekend, and I knew such a guest would be out of country paying his respects to a Barcelonian queen, overthrowing a dictator, or instilling democracy (let the people have what they want dammit), and I accepted his out of country absence. His absence was warranted.
I thought more about that walk I’d take soon though; I thought about my feet drawing whispers from snow sifted, and tossed by footsteps vanishing with fresh flakes, out of existence just as quick as they were birthed. I was walking somewhere, with footsteps that’d faded off nowhere, and I was free from the imprints of past actions.
I came back to the present.
The present; it hurt; the moment of acceptance that is, and yet, it was a hurt that had good cause, and it was a hurt needed for the sake of moving on.
A hurt that was living and letting go.
I’ve a way, a tendency of coat-hanging myself up on dreams of lives grown alongside girls that are too good for me — You don’t grow corn alongside tomatoes.
I’ve a way of chasing, boyishly so, after girls that are too sure of themselves for me, a man too unsure of everything that surrounds him, and I crumble to grains of dependent dust at the thought of a life shared for a beat with those girls, any of them, by my side or leading me toward a knee-high, yellow grass field of equilibrium where the bullshit doesn’t pervade for once.
I’ve a tendency to lend myself to coming on too damn strong to these girls; the peacocks and mirages they are — captivating, and arresting, and misleading from afar.
These girls, they’re always put off by the behavior I enact, because the behavior portrays me as desperate, or lonesome, or pathetic.
I’m all the above, and I’m worse.
I’m worse without something to hold on to — I’ll fall off the face of wherever I am, today, yesterday, and tomorrow.
I’ll be lost in myself forever, next year, or I already am lost.
There’s no reason those girls should give me shot, talk, and smile at making an impact of emotional ruination upon their star struck lives where they garner academic opinion, independence, feminism, ill-begotten pride, and chase down profile pictures that tell lives of togetherness within snapshots of sun-struck, hi-fi filtered beauty with perfectly minimalistic captions.
However.
I do cuddle.
I cuddle something fiercely intimate.
Yes, I do, I do despite my lack of feeling for intimacy and natural gravity toward something more listlessly, detached.
Yes, the feeling’s a natural gravity toward something more physically primal when I find myself graced with company underneath the covers, or a one-night stand nearby, and stimulation in no shorty supply with the warmth between bodies sharing bed, generating fervor struck lust from a well dug deep as the soul’s lustful desire.
I do fuck love. I do fuck love despite my mind and empty heart — instead, I feel the thumping echo of a cavity filled with self-prescribed solitude.
I do make good conversation from time to time, and I do appreciate the pause between sentences inevitable through conversation not carried out through the virtual medium.
I’m looking at a face; a face that’s good looking for now, and already hinting signs of age fulfilled erosion. The bastard must see it coming when he addresses himself, if he does from a plate glass mirror at some point during the day — maybe morning, maybe evening, I could give less a fuck.
This face is the face of a man that’s pushed the girl I longed after down an avenue of meaningful conversation his way without his working to do so; yes, the girl I helplessly longed after is in Belfast, while I’m in Dublin, most of the time.
The push though indirect, and given without knowledge on his part was well necessary.
I idealized her, and her tendencies. Her and her pussy, and the dreamt up magic it’d excrete at first encounter, first stroke, and last rushed stroke. The last stroke is always forcefully rushed, despite the man’s wants because passion dictates irrationality, does it not?
I idealized her and her mannerisms, and considered her passionate toward a life that might glimpse recognition of my existence, and I foolishly hoped that moment might come to fruition.
That sounds the pained aching of a man too weak to chase after the girl, but am I?
Am I readers?
Do we really stretch our limbs, our hearts, and our souls to rip-torn-uselessness in the pursuit of those individuals we’re so damned captivated with?
Or instead, do we retreat within ourselves, within the bottoms of bottles, the stubs of smokes, and the depths of meaningless small-talk with meaningless strangers to fill the void? I do occasionally, of course so do some of you.
Most often at least, we don’t stretch our souls.
Any damn fools who broadcast themselves as outside the pack are checker-plaid jesters crowing trickery to a court of supposedly blindly, ignorant judges that are anything but the ingrates the jesters took them for.
The fools, they’d do well to speak silence, and wait for humility.
I didn’t. I couldn’t stretch my soul, not now at least. Possibly, never.
I came out the womb, screamed at the world, marked with the weakness of strength required to deal with acceptance of loss — from my birth onwards, and the very weakness, well hell, the weakness is why I sit behind the screen, tapping, occasionally pounding, always striking keys with half-meanings well later than I should be awake.
Then again, I can’t find sleep these days, I can find bloodshot 4am lucidity though, and I’m restless with self-perpetuated depraved disquietude, and I’m just okay, I’m just okay with it all.