01.07.09-07

I’m just now starting to realise that there are certain things that will always be stained by your presence, now banished. That there will always be books that have two authors for me; you, and the person that wrote the words. When I read those books, I read them with you, whether you know that or not. I read, alone, in my bed with cold sheets, you in my head reading with me, as if you were looking over my shoulder making comments. Your narration overtakes me.

Now when I read about that character, the one like me, I can not see her without seeing you. I can not think about her without thinking about what you think of her. What you said about her stung, and I will always feel that sting, because I will always see the words “she looks like someone I could fuck and leave” alongside the words of the real author. When I think of her fixing her mussed up hair with a self-consciousness that made her hands shake, and her pulling the sheet quickly over exposed breasts, I see a hideous reflection of my own inadequacies and how they must have appeared to you, you who can not even abide seeing a woman not able to move without consciousness on an empty dance floor. I think about what you must have thought of my lack of grace. My fumbling touches, my insipid moans, my too intense feelings and my inabilities… how you must have compared them to the detached grace of the beautiful women who had been there before me. I wonder if you compared me to the ones who were there after.

I wonder if you took me to bed so you could narrate in your head a story about a little girl who thought too much of you while you thought too little of her. A girl that you took from and lied about, used as a mirror and then forgot. A girl you emptied yourself into. At the fore of this story would be everything that made her forgettable. You would outline with scientific precision every imperfection that allowed you to treat her like she was nothing to anybody. There would be no consideration of your own imperfections, you would not reward the girl for her ability to see them and love you anyway.