I heard them gossiping again. One little known secret of our school is that the walls the music room and girls bathroom were once one and the partition now seperating them is only that: a flimsy piece of wood thrown up to divide an arching hall into two cramped spaces. The sort of person that could have made such a desicion is alien to me, to my endless rolling oceans, the endless black skies I once gaurded, but he was evidently the same sort of person as the two girls now discussing my performance. A feeling stikes me, so suddenly that I do not know what it is. Terror, disgust, hatred, a sadness for the pettiness of humans that nothing must outmatch them, the ache that I will forever by seperated from them by my inability to feel it...all of them, but none of them...strikes me in the gut, making me gasp for salt water, for its essence within me, for the hard touch of hands and the gentle touch of lips. But the only hands, my own, clutch rose lipstick hard enought to mark them if they were mortal enough to be marked. The only lips, the same, barely parted despite my heavy breath, cherry red despite my lack of makeup. And the only thing I inhale is cold, sterile air. My heart pangs, a heart I am not used to feeling within this living statue of perfection. Dry land and harsh air (harsher words) are not what I am made for. My shelaque of culture is like a crabs shell, protecting me from anything painful, and like a hard pottery vessel imprisioning the liquid of myself inside. And, like water in a broken pot, when a hole formed of violin, the stroke of a brush, or simply the roar of the sea (my own heartbeat) in a shell allows a greatfull release of pressure the rest seeks to follow. But something is always left behind in the bottom of the pot. Their converstaion turns and I follow it, follow their complaints that I think everything here far too easy for me. Internal composure returns as I find myself bemused by their comments. Surely they would not expect an Olympic runner to find a high school PE class thrilling? This gloomy Lazarus life is too easy for me, but that does not mean I do not struggle the same as they do in my own field. I half decide to turn towards the door explain to them that my feelings in a battle are not so different from theirs at school and that neither is superior...when one of them complains that the boy she likes always looks at me. Her thoughts have taken on a flat tang, our different flavors now those of tin to rich chocolate cake....no, of the sterilized air I breath to the insistent pressure of a kiss, a kiss they would never understand. I could (maybe) explain the technical difference between a flat, muscular chest under my hands, and the way my fingers brush at the back of her neck as her breasts press into mine, but they would have no words for the taste of guilt, for the desperate knowledge that either of us could have died, could still die. No words, even, for the idea that one kiss could be enough to satisfy every need, to crumble...no, for my bones and flesh and blood to shatter my marble on their own strength, their own fight into life. To prove that their force is eternal, stronger always than the words that that drop a curtain of clear diamond between others and me, seperating our realities, seperating me from myself.