Forever Untitled
I don’t suppose I felt anything when she came through the door, her cheeks raw. Her eyes enveloped in veils of tears, layer upon layer, each one making her gaze seem further and further away. I could stare back for hours and be none the wiser. There was a distance – a level of awareness I hadn’t reached – and I suppose that is why I felt nothing. Instead, I swivelled around in my rickety desk chair as she fumbled her way over to the bedside, removing her cardigan, ineffectually dusting away at her under-eyes which only further soaked in the tears – staining there. Anxiously – or perhaps to mimic anxiety – I nibbled at the end of my pen, awaiting as she gathered her words, her eyes now downcast from my own. She was barely able to face such youthful naivety, to watch the dropping of my countenance – shifting from a neutral optimism to a ruminating shock, paralysed by how to act, what to say, how to behave. Whether to scream as one is snatched from a comfortable reality to that of something which had once felt so surreal – like the overdramatised narrative device of a soap opera, reused whenever the plot resolves.