Naïvety went for a long walk and came back dirty and unwilling to shave. Unwilling to be bound to whatever life it had left for the road. So she is stuck. She finds no comfort in her worldly knowledge. Not the way she’s meant too. There are too many meals against her guts. She is too dark to be penetrated by useful light.
She smokes. Like other kids who grew up cool and stressed about the responsibility of some day discovering the effects that tomorrow has on today. It’s the same thing. She plays with her lip while her fingers pinch the cigarette. Like former Hollywood heroines. Not smooth, laughing Mae Wests. The nervous and timid femme fatales of Hollywood’s young adulthood. Twitchy women with darting eyes. She balks at being more rabbit than woman. She knows there isn’t a man to save her.
This isn’t about feminism or echoes of Doris Lessing. She is both waiting and not waiting for some life to cling to. She wanted, always, to have one foot on the ground and one hand halfway up a mountain. Either way, at all times with the cold, solid planet pulling heat from her skin. A kind of exchange: a portion of the Earth’s validity for the heat in her skeleton.
Her laughter is never spontaneous. Her sense of humour never gives itself away. Even in her recklessness, it delivers short barks that are never abandoned. Every day, she forgets who she was while she was asleep and wanders through the alert part of the day with hyperawareness of the unfunny world.
She does not believe in me. I am always a figment, always the unseen puppeteer. Even though I never attached any of my strings. We were inevitable and she stays as if I suit her. But we don’t love each other. Unconditionally and courageously.