Mairoo

A Constant

Guilt.

It’s all he feels.

It’s all he knows.

It defines him.

-

And it makes him want to weep out his self-pitying, shitty little soul.

Hand

He feels pressure in his chest. A slab of concrete laid across his ribs, blocking his breathing.

He looks down. Just there, just where the design on his t-shirt ends, there’s a hand, firmly planted, pushing.

Return

Him: I missed you.

Her: Did you really?

Him: Yes, really.

Silence.

Under

And then he’s gone. The water swirls and eddies, tiny whirlpools marking the last trace of his futile presence.

He sinks, eyes stinging, stomach churning, into the depths. His lungs fill with shame and self-recrimination. And then he’s gone.

Gone

I miss you.

I miss it.

Why do things have to be so complicated?

Arrows

He sits in the centre of the room, bare floorboards stretching out around him. The light slants through the skylight, dust swirling in its shadows.

Around him, photographs: the faces of those close to him. And those who are further away. The people he knows and feels obligation to. The people signified by the empty phrase ‘friends and family’.

He takes a pen, a thick black marker, and starts to draw. He draws arrows, all of them pointing away from him. All of them moving from him across the floor in heavy scars to point directly at the images.

He stops at one picture, an image of a small child. She is smiling at the camera, gap-toothed, tousled. He pauses. Draws an arrow. But this time it is different. This time something changes the ritual. This time he pauses, looks again at the image, at the thick black line running away from him. This time he pauses and, in pausing, reaches a conclusion. He bends his head, places the pen to the floorboard, and carefully, hesitantly, draws a second arrow, one this time moving back towards him.

Above

The wire wobbles beneath him, each tremor amplified into buckling as it bounces back from the firm ground at either end. He tries to correct his balance, arms waving, toes gripping the wire, but each shift of position creates new tremors, new oscillations that travel out, hit the solid cliff-face and return, moulding themselves into yet more movement.

He bends and flexes, leans and straightens. Cramp runs up from the sole of his feet into his calves as he fights the wire, fights the vibrations that threaten to force him down, to throw his body spiralling into the canyon below.

He fights, toes tight, screaming for help.

Now

I want it to stop now.

I want to stop always feeling pissed off with myself.

Momentary

The chest tightens. The heart quickens. A flush of frustration seethes through the brain.

It just takes a moment. A handful of words.

And then for hours, the shame, the self-disgust, the absolute certainty that I am pathetic.

Over there

The truth is, sometimes you feel so far away. And that hurts.

Her

Look at this girl. She swims in thick swarms of self-incrimination, self-loathing seeping from her pores. She swims in blindness, ignorant of the truth.

Now look at me. I stand over here, the other side of the divide. I grieve that I cannot cross it, that I cannot be there as much as I want to be; I grieve that we can’t just be the friends I want us to be.

I stare across the gap. I stand in amazement, in wonder.

She’s so cool.

I open my mouth, bellowing my feelings. The wind seethes, grabbing my words and sweeping them down into absence.

I open my mouth again, try again, speak truth. The words are plucked away and crushed against the rock beneath my feet.

It’s not much, what I want to say. It’s nothing that will change the world. It won’t destroy…or heal, or break or repair. It’s only words. But it’s the truth:

‘You’re cool. You’re incredible. I like you. Be my friend.’

I draw breath, my vocal chords scraping dissonance from the inrush. My lips move, shape themselves into meaning. I try again, throwing my voice out in hope that this time, perhaps, it will be heard.

Text

He turns a corner and it’s there, sprayed 30 feet high across the side of a decaying hospital. The colours blare from the brickwork: blues and yellows, reds and greens, a kaleidoscopic linguistic explosion.

He stops pedalling, lifts his sunglasses and reads. His lips move as he makes out the text, a frown staining his brow with self-awareness: “U R PATHETIC.”

Crumble

And again they fall apart. Shredded against the sharp edge of my lethargy; grated by the granite surface of my indolence.

The panic returns. My teeth clench. I sweat.

The headphones blast grief into my head.

I sigh as I watch them crumble: my intentions.