Smile.
Yes, that was the way you went at it. You want to fill them with rage
and wonder. Why did he smile like that, they would furiously berate
themselves mentally, what does he have to be happy about? Smugness
dripping down your face like the traces of a dirty, unforgivable
deed. The one committed. The one that was realized just for this
purpose.
I wanted to see your face fall, your lip quiver just
like that before you pulled yourself together, fixing your usual
carefree mask, the one that had been coming unglued lately. Do you
need me? Do you want me to hold it up for you? Because I would do
anything. I really would... have.
But now it's too late. I've
tested the limits and found them to be misdrawn, choosing to take
another step... and then another. And you're still standing there, a
mile away, the synthetic smile shimmering in the spotlight, waves of
electric blue and violet streaming across the plastic skin
spastically. I wanted to save you from the seizures that were bound
to come, when you broke down in the middle of all that glamour and
icy love, real droplets dotting that pale mask of yours.
Forget
all the fans around you, poking at you, snatching away what little
remained of your humanity, your body famished of understanding,
famished of intimacy. I would push them away from you and I would
lift that mask up to see your eyelashes catching beads between them,
the frozen glass globules sliding between the mascara-coated
lushness. I would let those eyelids meet and close.
You need
someone to see you.
You need to stop seeing.
Just for a few moments.
It's been too much, too soon, all at
once. I would kiss your eyes closed, trying to pass my warmth to you
through my lips. You're so cold, so deliciously void of heat, like
strawberry ice cream, I try to savor you before you melt in my arms.
However, the pink-colored glow rushing to your cheeks is
enough to satiate me. I like you better this way. I like you better
alive, being you, being imperfect and soft and ticklish and sighing
and fluorescent and... beautiful.
Everyone around us
suddenly disappears, and a violin plays somewhere in the background.
It loves us, Time loves us, for it is now the only audience member in
the crowd, patiently observing without laying a finger on either of
us. I hold you, and you hold me even if you can't and shouldn't see
me.
Your heart is trying to break out of its cage to touch
mine. This simple mundane touch is not enough for it; the meaning of
"one" is literal for you. It wants to be me, and I don't
mind. I would break my body open just so that your meaning would be
true. It is not needed to accomplish what I have set out to do.
I
want to become your reality, your dreams, anything that would stop
the quivering of those lips that I craved so much when I injured you,
and let them stand on their own. Higher, rise higher, I know that,
unlike me, you have no limits, there is nothing that can surpass the
brightness of your smile.
This time all that I desire from
you is a smile like that, watching from afar, feeling my own heart
shatter into shards of glass, creeping into my system, making me
hemorrhage profusely, the blood filling me completely, welling up in
my eyes, a bitter, coppery taste on my tongue.
The stage is no
longer a stage. It has lost its powdered and pompous air, the
streaming lights glazing the floors, the cheers and smiles from a
myriad of unknown silhouettes in the stands. They are all sucked up
into the darkness as if the walls were holding their breath. It is a
show put up for the purpose of tearing down the one that means the
most to me while I, myself, am consumed from within. In so many, so
many ways.
I take my pictures, the flashes blinding all
bystanders. Because we, as performers, are all too familiar with the
magic of light, the things we can get away with when the focus is
directed elsewhere. The grin that I pasted onto my face fluttered
off, gliding to the ground, some cheap imitation of duct tape. It
never works. Only what is genuine will ever remain.
So I stand
there, naked, vulnerable, helpless, in front of sightless
misunderstandings, for the longest second. And then Time loses
interest and walks away to visit another concert, where perhaps the
lighting will not falter. I can't let anyone see my weakness,
especially not you, because it is my weakness for you that makes my
knees shake, my throat choke up with what seems to be anger,
laughter, sarcasm, but no. No, longing is its name.
I let you
go. Go back to him, the other, while I sit, broodingly, reminiscing
over the photographs. I hate the people doing that to your pure,
shimmering body, ephemeral like a desert mirage. I hate it so much
because I wanted to be the one in their place. Feeling you, touching
you, even if you didn't want it, even if you pushed me away, just so
I could communicate my emotions to you without letting the words trip
awkwardly from my twisting vocal cords.
Because this is all I
would ever get from you, isn't it? A memory of a snigger, of a
tease... of a smile?
