literature

Strange and beautiful

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Literature Text

You dream about falling in love with her in June. And when you wake up, you remember that you are supposed to her hate her, and you try to forget. But the images stay lodged, flickering projections unfurling across the curtains, echoing in the elbow creases of your skirting boards, rattling in the bathroom like a trapped bluebottle fly.

You dream about kissing her in June. This girl that you are supposed to hate. You dream about kissing her in the rain, by the bus stop opposite your local hospital. And the rain falls grey, concrete drops on the tarmac, the street light faintly glowing like a luminescent jellyfish, leaving a lion mane arc billowing around it. And there are cars that pass, a middle-aged couple stood a short distance away. The woman, she is wearing a smart trench coat and a small light green felt hat, and she glances back at you two from under her husband’s umbrella. You are not sure whether she smiles or not. And this girl is holding both of your hands, the rain running in rivers down her laughing face, her chestnut hair flattened into rivets and you swear it is like she is melting into you. You are supposed to hate her, you are supposed to hate her.

But she is beautiful, stood like Darcy in your favourite scene from your favourite movie. The local hospital stands stalwart behind her, fading like a star behind a sun. And the green unfolds dismally behind you, a flatline of sodden grass and sparse oak trees, the occasional dog walker. You know that your home lies just a corner away, can almost envisage taking her home with you, falling like letter and envelope on your doorstop, carrying her up the spiral staircase to your turret, and its novelty pelican lamp and its photo frames of old friends you haven’t seen in years, them all smiling at you and her dancing to awful pop music, kissing knees in the dark, sighing fingers stitched together, twin smiles beaming out like signal flares. But you are supposed to hate her, you are supposed to hate her.

You dream about kissing her in June, in your hometown in the rain. But you are half a world away from home and she has never even set a breath down on the threshold of your childhood universe. Her fingers have never held the local air, her eyes have not whispered in between the traffic pulses, she has never learned all of the curves and edges, the precipices and vertices of this little town like you have. But here she is, holding both of your hands, soaked from a sudden rain, laughing with a wide mouth that reminds you of how sometimes your curtains leave a crescent moon gap and you wonder if she is the thing that has been missing all along. And she is laughing, and you are blushing under her touch, burning up in a rainstorm and the water is cool as it slips over your skin silently, trailing down your arms to hers and suddenly you lean forward and you kiss her. You kiss her in the rain, opposite your local hospital, in a dream in June. And you are supposed to hate her, this girl who was once your closest friend, who let you down, who weighed your friendship as something lighter than air while you were shackled down by its iron weight. You revered her, and you respected her and it never echoed back when it needed to. But here you are, kissing this girl you are supposed to hate and loving how she tastes just like you remember, vaguely sweet, like jasmine tea. And her hands are cold in yours and her hair is parted into tributary streams and she is kissing you back in the rain, opposite your local hospital, in a dream in June. And you are supposed to hate her, you weakly remember, and the feeling sits wedged behind your knees, lodged between your watery ankles, pressed to one side of your body because right now her lips are all you can think about.

And you part, the middle-aged woman glancing back at you with what could be a smile, what could be a frown. And she is laughing, drawing one hand to her carmine mouth and looking at you with smile-squinted mahogany eyes, eyelashes dotted with silver rain flecks. And she asks “why” with a grin and you simply walk on, tugging her along by the hand and muttering that you thought it was romantic as she laughs, and a half-smile wryly curls into your cheeks and you think, why do I hate her again? Something tells you, somewhere from the depths of this dreamscape, that this is the first time you have kissed her, rather than her kissing you, and you wonder if this has made her happy. (Do I hate her? Do I still hate her?)

You end up in a strange hotel room, cheap and run-down, the sheets already wrinkled, the ashtrays already full. (Do I hate her? Do I really hate her?) You go about straightening the place out, and close the balcony sliding door, watching purple hills which are slowly being eroded by fast raindrops with a soft touch disappear behind a film of Perspex. The sky broods and there is a city far away burning up into the dark sky, bleeding out lilac diffusions and watercolour promises. You think about holding her hand in a foreign city, kissing her in front of a grand fountain, this girl you are supposed to hate. You think about falling in love with her in every capital city in Europe, you think about dedicating an ocean to her, you think about painting a chapel with her smile over and over, you think about her. And there she is, figure reflected in the glass against a backdrop of dilapidated wallpaper and stark yellow artificial lighting. There she is, fussing with her trouser buttons, shirtless with a cigarette dangling from her pursed lips. And her spine ripples up out of her skin and you wonder what each ridge would feel like under your tongue. And her shoulderblades carve, curve and you wonder how much they can bend under your palms, going from flat to armoured to wings and back again. Those thin fingers struggle with the button and you wonder how they would feel against your eyelashes, resting on your sternum, how far they can reach, how far they can bend. Her hair twists down in front of her chest, and she is serpentine and soft and a silk covering of icing thin over hollow bird bones, you wonder how it would feel to dance with her again. And suddenly her trousers are falling into crumpled forgotten shapes on the floor and you are turning with racing irises and a lump in your throat because you don’t hate her, you don’t hate her.

You dream about falling in love with her in June. She lies back on the bed, stretched out under your eyes and every piece of her is beautiful. And for a moment you think about kissing her and for a moment you think about loving her and for a moment you remember that sweet taste of jasmine tea, the delicacy you have only held in your heart three times over and you can hear the rain as if it is scattering off of your hollowed back, as if it is clattering on your xylophone ribs from the inside, as if it is dropping from every sharp piece of you. And you realise that you love her, you love her, you love her when you dream about kissing her in June. And you wake up and you wonder, you wonder, you wonder. But you are supposed to hate her, and you try to forget.
3/6/15
Dreaming about a girl, one girl, the girl. And she is, she is and that feels like enough (but it isn't, is it)
THE GROOVIEST LIT IN TOWN: VOLUME TWENTY
© 2015 - 2024 comatose-comet
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atrophy129's avatar
This is ... stunning. Beautiful and captivating. I was gripped till the end. Ahh I loved it!! :heart:
Fabulous job !