a character study. written mostly as an experiment.
the way you drop
is like a stone
making out you're flying
but you've just been thrown
[hope sandoval & the warm inventions, drop]
i.
he was best at falling.
his drops were spectacular, they were something to look at, they were something to admire. he was most beautiful while falling down; his face desperate and full of defeat mixed with undying hope, his eyes full of the sweetest plea to somebody, anybody, who would want to listen. his lips then were tearful, his lips and not his eyes, opened in fully-formed cry, cry like a bird's shriek vibrating under grayish skies, cutting through one's mind and soul.
his falling didn't mean that he was losing a battle, it never did to him. his falling meant that next time he'll have to aim higher, struggle harder, sacrifice more; that he'll have to work his life away in an effort to avoid all traps and temptations, in an effort not to fall again.
but it hardly mattered because he was condemned to his fate of dropping, to his eternal fate of not achieving and failing at attempts, to being a shooting star, breathtaking while ceasing to exist.
his heart ached and his eyes shone, burning like icy suns, covered by fluttering eyelids as his harsh words were working their way through, intended to hurt and bruise, to make his own falling less painful.
"i'll take you down with me," no matter what he said, his words always meant, "you're mine, you're mine and you can't change it, i'll make you fall apart and you won't even like to escape."
and he was right, he knew how to make the best out of the worst, how to change cards. he knew that they all were slaves of his downfalls, watching him closely, warming their faces in his momentary glory like moths seduced by the light, fulfilling their fantasies through his dusk.
there was something special about him, something extraordinarily unrightful in the way he used his falling to spear up like a wild flower, out of place, out of mind's capability to catch and understand. it was luring and mesmerizing, it was his biggest weapon and his only salvage from the world driven by loss and despair, his only salvage to escape himself.
ii.
"so you are just one of the others," he said relentlessly to the man sitting across the table in a neat cafeteria they were eating their dinner at. "you never thought of what happens when the fall ends, you just want to throw me to the wind and see me falling down, you want-"
"i never said that i want to see the end of the falling," broke in that dark-haired man, the man with a voice full of softness, whose coarse fingers were gently brushing his hand. "i'll catch you before you hit the ground and then let you fly some more, i promise. you love to fly."
he didn't answer, or answered with all he had if hiding his face in his hands could be considered as an answer of any sort; then he lifted his head and looked at that man through his fingers, eyes full of the sweetest plea, lips weary of forthcoming cry, and he said in a small, cracked voice, "nobody ever cared."
"i do," assured firmly that man, not letting him fall this time. "i do," he repeated softly after a while. "i really do."
iii.
he was best at falling.
his drops were spectacular, they were something to look at, they were something to admire. he was most beautiful while falling down; his face desperate and full of defeat mixed with undying hope, his eyes full of the sweetest plea to somebody, anybody, who would want to listen. his lips then were tearful, his lips and not his eyes, opened in fully-formed cry, cry like a bird's shriek vibrating under grayish skies, cutting through one's mind and soul.
his falling didn't mean that he was losing a battle, it never did to him after that one meeting in a neat cafeteria over a year ago. it meant that he was able to fly and bloom and decay and that he had the right to be saved after that, to be reborn in arms of the only man who made him feel alive and victorious, the man who had taught him that falling is only a part of the rise, the rise that ballerinas do all the time dancing their lives away.
he was best at falling, but since that meeting in a cafeteria people so fond of his drops have seen him only diving graciously, diving like a hawk does to reach his prey, and then rising again to fly high above their skies of envy and lust, right under the sun of hope and joy.
iv.
he had used to think that he is best at falling.
but then he found out that love is about something more than just not being able to fly.