Mine

It seemed like the world was underwater. I blinked my eyes twice, thrice, and the fog of sleep lifted. One quick glance at the wall clock told me that I had overslept by some thirty minutes or so. Lifting my body out of bed took little effort. After three years of the same routine, it had grown used to the abuse of rude (though self-imposed) awakenings. It used to offer some form of resistance in the beginning, when I began to subject it to these 3 A.M. wake-up calls, but it was a trooper. A regular veteran of war.

I headed to the pantry, where I found an almost empty box of 3-in-1 coffee. One packet lay waiting for me there and I took it from its misery, ripping it open where it was marked "tear here".

I have to stop anthropomorphizing inanimate objects.

I poured the contents into a mug an ex-boyfriend had given me for our first Christmas together, when he still had no idea what sort of girl I was. Generic store-bought objects are usually bought early on in relationships, when boys are still trying to gauge if you are the type of girlfriend who won't really give a fuck about what they give you, as long as they say they love you, or if you're the type of girlfriend that every boy fears: high-maintenance and will give them shit for every unoriginal act of love that they commit.

Fortunately, first Christmases are always full of forgiveness, so any miscalculation on their part will be forgiven.

I'm the third type of girl. The secretly high-maintenance one who pretends she is above all that and says material things don't really matter, when in fact, they abso-fucking-lutely do.

I turned on the tap and filled my cup with water, then shuffled over to the microwave to finish the deed.

When my coffee was finally ready, I ambled over to my study desk with the mug in hand. It is a stupid looking thing, with three pink hearts on it, proudly proclaiming the words "Best Girlfriend" in pink Comic Sans. I thought it looked hideous when he gave it to me, and I still think it looks hideous now, but the funny thing is I still use it. It is a very useful mug, and it keeps me company when I'm slouched over my books, pretending to study, when to be perfectly honest, I'm just thinking about random things that I have no time to think about when I'm in the waking world.

Reading is secondary. Mulling things over is really the whole point.

I picked up my reviewer on apoptosis and started thinking about death in earnest. I think I would be okay with it. Dying, I mean. I'm not that terrified of the whole process of shutting down and ceasing to exist, at least in the way that I'm used to. I'm more afraid of watching people go. It's the prospect of being left behind that scares me. I don't know what could be lonelier than that, to know that the people you love have gone onto places that you can't follow. At least, not for now.

I like the lull at this hour.

I know this is a false sense of solitude because all over the world, people are awake, doing random day-to-day shit, but for now, in my part of the world, at least, it is silent.

For now, at least, the time is mine.

Lost

This is how it's going to work. I'm going to see you, maybe two or three times a week, and I'm going to pretend that you don't exist. Then I'll see you on a day when I'm drunk enough on cheap wine from the convenience store two blocks away from my place and then we'll talk, and this is how it will all play out.

You: Why are you ignoring me?

Me: What are you talking about?

At this point, I'll laugh drunkenly and sling an arm around your shoulders. I'll pretend nothing is wrong and try to tease you into thinking that maybe you've been overcome by neurosis and that it's all in your head.

Things have changed, as much as I hate to admit it. It used to be that I could look at you, straight in the eye, and talk to you about anything, just about anything, and not be afraid to hold that gaze, or that you would look away first. It used to be that I could make you laugh and that you would understand every single thing about me and that we liked the same food and held each other's hands and had our own language that no one else would understand.

It used to be that you were mine, in some wonderful little way. But time has a way of changing things, turning them inside-out and making them so unrecognizable that they become completely different entities, and no matter how hard you try, you can no longer find what it was that you loved so much about them.

But then again, contrary to the natural order, there are things that stay the same, left behind forever in the aftermath of change. There are things, feelings, places...

Even people.

Ephemera

Call me crazy, but here's the thing. I ain't one of those folks who like to look ahead of me that often. Or at all. I mean, all right, there is some merit to the idea of having a plan; one of them rock-solid plans that will give you direction, whatever that is. But you know what, fuck direction, seriously, it doesn't take real life into account.

My old man's always telling me, "GET SOME SENSE INTO THAT GODDAMN HEAD, FRANK. I DIDN'T RAISE YOU TO BE NO IDIOT." He says that I have no concrete plans for my life and that everything he ever did for me is just going down the goddamn drain. Before you start thinking of me as some ingrate, lemme tell you this, pal.

The way things usually go is that they hardly ever go the way you planned. Hey, listen, my cousin Jenny was expecting a kid, okay, and she found out that it was a little girl and all, and so she and her husband fixed up the guest room at their place all feminine-like, with pink walls and all. They even got a pink bassinet with the frilly shit, you know what I'm saying? Then one day, I find out that she'd lost the kid, and that she'd never be able to have any ever again.

I'm not saying life is always shit. I'm no pessimist, believe me. Quite the opposite.

What I'm saying is, you take this life for what it is, for every second you breathe, for that pretty lady's hand you're holding this very moment, for that smile you got out of the kid sitting at the table across you, for your old man's chest moving up and down while he's asleep. You take it in for all it's worth and be thankful for every second you got here.

Maybe you all have a point, working your 9 to 5's, thinkin' ahead of time, saving up for that fancy sports car and whatnot.

But we gotta be honest with ourselves. Dreams are beautiful, to wanna be able to look ahead and make big plans, that'll always be in the picture for us human beings I guess, but what I'm saying is really this.

Now is all we've really ever got.

Just now.

Maps

I wish you came with an instruction manual.

Silver

You sabotage every possibility of a healthy relationship by comparing it an ideal that you should have abandoned as soon as you outgrew your dollhouse and the sandboxes in each playground you would frequent. There is no white knight, there is no prince to rescue you from your tower. There will be no elaborate schemes by an evil sorcerer intent on keeping you apart from your true love, no heart-stopping duels to the death for your hand, no forest friends to act as comedic distractions from the tragedy that is your loneliness, no blessings from white witches on your wedding day.

In the time we live in, such ideas must be dismissed. The world of steel and granite does not welcome romance, does not lend itself to the idea of your one true love coming to save you from the clutches of a cruel life.

Yet you sit in your tower, waiting by the window, sighing with your cheek pressed against the pane, still hopeful that he will come.

Princess, I must tell you time and again, you will wait forever only to have your heart broken.

Love Like a Sunset

The last light finally went out, but even in the darkness I could see your chest rising and falling with each breath. You were fast asleep, lost somewhere exchanging kind words with Pierre Dénys de Montfort about your thoughts on the existence of the Kraken or escorting Queen Mab to her glittering spiderweb throne. Your arms were locked tightly around my waist, your face was against my neck. My back ached terribly from lying on the flat surface of the floor, but I did not dare move.

You look so beautiful when you sleep.