I don’t show it and I don’t tell this to people around me. In fact I don’t like to be seen as someone who is dependent on others. It’s a secret that gives me a small purpose to live another day. Each day I attempt to create a world around me that makes me less lonely. Every moment I try to emit an individuality that screens my fear of existing in a limbo.
Every single object in my house is meant to serve one of these tasks. Carefully curated, normal-looking artifacts. Like the terracotta vase that stands out just enough to barter questions from some curious eyes. Kept right next to the front door, on top of the black three-legged stool, it made the girl from the grocery store stay longer. She had offered to come home to give me the packet of garlic that I had left behind. It was not a surprise. Her eyes had been knocking on mine for days. I dreaded looking at her crooked hands every time she’d wave at me. Yet her face lighting up every evening at my sight somehow validated my presence. The pods of garlic I left behind were symptoms of my growing loneliness.
I invited her in to take a closer look at the vase. The directionless fingers wrapped around the hollow mud. It irked me, but the loneliness outweighed my disgust. I needed those fingers to pierce my skin. I wanted her thin arms to slither around mine. I walked towards the hall - a welcome disguised as disinterest. She removed her shoes and followed. Her socks were still on; I ignored. She complimented my plants. There were many inside, each serving its purpose as every word I said did. My plants loved to be touched. She never touched a single leaf in the next two months that she visited the house. An act that would have made her fingers more bearable, beautiful even. She remained a guest even when she stayed over.
Some are lured by the glitter, some sustained by darkness.
I had got the orange cushion made just for them. On the day they came home with a friend, I had a crush on the image of them sitting on my chair. Their plump thighs, taut, pressed on the wooden edge of this dead furniture. An intricate wooden armchair that I had thrifted years ago. As if this moment, this vision in front of me was the reason for me to buy it back then. I hardly spoke to them that day. I had no interest in their words. My eyes were feasting. They leaned forward to take a closer look at the book on the table next to me. I don’t remember what I’ve been reading, but I remember the stink of their sweat that never stopped.
It was the same stink when they visited again. They had texted me a book recommendation and many words followed. I invited them for a brunch. The bright orange cushion was now set in place. The image of them on my chair was even more gorgeous. Looks weren’t the only purpose of that pillow. I wanted that seat to be warm and comfortable. I wanted those thighs to feel at home. My hunt for that fabric a week before was the sign of the haunting seeping back in. The food was a distraction, it was the orange cloud that paved the way to their heart. A mind that lusts for books is often owned by an ass that finds home in plush. I kept cooking for them but my love for the sight of them would fade with the orange of that cushion. In all those moments we shared, they never joined me in the kitchen.
In times of great distress, all I got was a cold embrace.
We’d been friends for 7 years. I had met him during a work travel. We stepped out in the evening for a drink and spoke till dawn next to the sea. We spoke about everything and anything. Hours and hours of sharing each other’s childhood to wasting breaths on global politics. Never have we run out of words to throw at each other. Never have I gotten tired of watching that creature’s animated gestures cropped often by my phone’s screen. And never had we spoken about our sexualities. I never sensed a desire from him for me beyond my thoughts.
The first time he got angry was a few years into our friendship. I had refused to ignore the fallacy in his argument. I usually don’t care for words and debates. I had disagreed as a tease and the weather changed very quickly. Anger was a buried treasure deep inside him and I had dug long enough. But an angry person far away can only be so much bother. I would forgive and forget and we would get back to our usual chit-chat soon enough.
On the first evening when he visited, I lit the lavender incense on the mantle as he spoke of his travels. I sat next to him and held his hand; he enquired at my eyes for a moment and continued his memoir. My eyes are good at lying.
The lavender in the air started to fizzle, I got conscious of our sweaty palms and tried to get it loose. He held it tighter. My eyes enquired this time. He didn’t lie, neither did his lips. He was visiting for a week. On the third day, my house heard him roar. I hid under the table for an hour. An hour where he was the king of my house. He took over my vases, and my plants, he smelled lavender and erased words from my books.
When he was leaving I cried.
#LoveAndDesire