Thursday 21 August 2014

Bully

 “Why do you bully?”

She’d been taught to stare like that. She’d copied another school counsellor’s stone like gaze, the ruler-measured line of her lips. I stared back at her in the same way. She was a statue – almost. Aside from our breaths, mine faster than hers; she moved her fingers, nails drumming against the table Slowly, as if the sounds were different and each needed to be heard. My mother did that.

She’d do it right before she opened her mouth. It was an introduction, a way of leading me into the insults, softening my fall. She’d feel my body tense, my skin harden. Idiot, liar, good for nothing. She’d pace around the kitchen and drum her nails on the knives as if they were rose petals. Her pupils were bullets and I was not immortal. Her yells pierced my ears – they never became familiar. Worthless, pointless. They hurt. They stung like injections at a doctor’s office, when the needle doesn’t hurt as much as the nurse’s lies. My mother’s shouts wouldn’t crack glass, but shatter it until the pieces resembled nothing other than disappointment – what I’d become to her. I regret you.

I hear snippets of her in my voice. The insults I hand out are mirror reflections of her, likes replaying tapes of my evenings.

“Well?” The counsellor’s robotic voice became a melody, more comforting than any I’d ever known.

“It’s the only thing I know how to do.”

Monday 4 August 2014

Anyway

She was the type of girl who stacked her pancakes higher than her plate would allow. As she coated them in a thick layer of syrup, the tower would topple and she would laugh. Her laugh sent shivers through my body. She was the type of girl whose eyes twinkled as she flipped the pages of her favourite paperback. My hoodie drowned her body as she pushed her glasses up to the top of her nose. She couldn’t hide her giggles as she knew I was watching her. I couldn’t stop. She was the type of girl who woke up in the middle of the night and went down to the kitchen. Her footsteps were wind chimes on the stairs. When I woke up in the morning, remains of chocolate would lick the bottom of the mug and the marshmallows would dot the marble counter. She was the type of girl whose cheeks turned the colour of her lips when I whispered “I love you.” She was blind to her own beauty, when it was all I could see. She was the type of girl who painted the sunset, her eyes shimmering in front of the canvas, like the ocean under the evening light. She wouldn’t show me the paintings, hiding them away. She didn’t know I looked at them later. My breath caught in my throat without her, and I’d forget to breathe when I was with her. She was the type of girl you couldn’t argue with. You’d watch her face fall and feel your heart tear away from your body. “You’re right, I’m sorry,” I’d say every time. She was the type of girl who cried when she left. Even her tears were crystals. Her eyes wouldn’t meet mine, her breaths drowning my begs. Men don’t cry, my father’s words rung in my ears. I ignored them. I held out my arms but I could no longer reach her. She told me it was over, she was that type of girl. I loved her anyway.