4: soft and filthy

note: this is an immediate continuation of part 3: bird parts on cork boards.

And it was me. And it was her. And it still wasn’t like how it was in the movies. We were all fumbled words and awkward movements. I adopted a nervous stutter and the thought of eye contact made me sweat. She couldn’t stop adjusting the position of her glasses and followed everything I said by ‘mhm, yeah’ or ‘mhm, yeah, for sure’.

Then she found courage and read me snips from poems I’d never heard before, written by a drunken man. That’s all I know of Bukowski, that he was a lonesome drunk. But that day I found out that he once wrote about walking through fire, and I think that there is something to that.

I don’t know everything about life, but what I can say is this: life won’t pick you up when you fall, it will not forgive you for any mistakes along the way. It is a one way road, a one-way road that is on fire and full of traffic. And no one is protected, just flame to flesh as we scream and barrel forward. Everyone is suffering to some degree, it only matters how you make it through. And from what she read to me, it’s safe to say Bukowski made it through by mixing whiskey with beer and keeping one hand on a woman. I am not Bukowski.

She told me her favorite quote by him was one from a letter he once wrote a lover and it’s as follows: find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.

And I wondered, how can this be true of love, too? How is it right to want to chain them to your very being, but also want to drown inside of them, gone. What does it mean to be in love with someone else? Is it this soft and steady hope for better days, or the sense of being gently swept away? I’m not sure it mattered to me really, as I was surely in love with her already.

Time was passing. She had started to string together chosen words, reciting poems written by a man who only wrote dirty things about his pretty lovers. She was bold in a way that made you want to be bold, too. And I liked that about her. It was intoxicating. And really what it was, was the sight of those lush lips forming and framing those nasty words. Oh, I liked it.

But that isn’t to say I was suddenly able to be less myself and more confident. No, not at all. I mumbled something intentionally unintelligible and went off in the direction I was initially heading. But the thought of our last few moments together had me in the dark, unable to remember what I wanted, besides her.

I ended up leaving, not casting a glance in her direction in my search for the exit. Back to my apartment, where it was quiet and safe. Keys in the dish, clink. I called out into the darkness: honey, I’m home. I heard the distant tinkling of an approaching bell. Soft paws padded on the hardwood floor and Fin greeted me with a disgruntled meowl, stretching his slender body into a half moon.

And I thought, how comfortable it is to be alone.