Goodnight

Maybe it'd all be better if I were pretty like you. They always called you the pretty one, and I'd smile too. It wasn't because I thought you were pretty. On the contrary, I thought you were beautiful, but I wasn't about to mention it. I waited patiently for my compliment to arrive but they would send a fleeting glance in my direction, accompanied with a hesitant smile and before I even had time to begin a deliberation, they were back to you, commenting on the new award that you won at school, the one that would sit with the other 32. Yes, I counted.

Maybe it'd all be better if I loved someone too. Yes, perhaps. And I wonder if what I feel, this gut wrenching sentiment, if this is love. I think not, because it only seems to deepen as I try to forget about it, and it persists, like a fly around a neon light. And it hurts. I also wonder whether when they say, "love hurts" they mean like this. This feeling that roots it's way deep inside my heart and scratches, making shallow wounds deep and letting infection seep in.

Is this love?

You tell me you love her, and I sit on the bed, behind your dresser and watch as you brush your short rich hair and I want to smile. But I don't because love is a Serious Subject. And so I ask instead what love is like. "It's like a thousand butterflies, fluttering in your stomach, and wind blowing your hair and cool refreshing water flowing all around you." I raise an eyebrow, ever so slightly sceptical, but I make sure you don't notice because I learned from the last time.

No, I don't think that's love because what I feel must surely be something akin to this if I can't even summon any real hope of ceasing my ever lasting gazes and my painfully obvious sighs. Surely, if you were in love, you would feel as I do. Yes, love does hurt.

Maybe it'd all be better if someone loved me. Sometimes, as I walk through the hallways in school, I like to fantasize. I pick out a random person from the crowd, and make a life for us both. A life where I'm loved and it doesn't matter that I'm not as pretty as the rest of the girls. Or as skinny. Or as perfect. You tell me that somebody will fall in love with me one day, but as weeks turn into months that turn into years, I know you're mistaken. After all, a love unreturned is nothing more than infatuation.

Maybe it'd all be better if I lost my virginity. I know it wouldn't be difficult. In parts of town where the stench of unemployment hangs in the air with the drink and drugs, old men wander, eager for a taste of young meat, regardless of its stipulation. I visited once, curious more than anything and in the evening, I returned, wide eyed and I ended up sobbing on your shoulder. No, I don't think it'd be better to lose my virginity. Then, as well as having lost my self-respect, I will have lost my dignity. And after having lost my pride when I found you, I would be left with nothing.

Maybe it'd all be better if I let myself feel. You told me once not too think about things too much because life is too short. I sometimes doubt this, as when I have finished a hard day and I want nothing than to curl up into a little ball in your arms, I think that life is long, and when I look back, a week later, feeling much the same, it feels like a year has passed and I sigh. I used to say in wheezing voice when sleep had almost engulfed me, "If these are the wonder years, then what have we to look forward to?" And I'd chuckle and finally, you told me.

I don't dwell on things anymore, instead taking things in and storing them away at the back of my mind, reluctant to throw them away, lest I lose a part of myself with them. And as I forgot how to dwell, I forgot how to feel and I became something slightly inhuman and a little cruel but I was careful not to show.

Maybe it'd all be better if I could kill. To me, killing doesn't deign itself as a terrible thing. Only as an act of giving someone passage way to the next life, full of which, one would hope, good grace and tranquillity. I watch the sun rising and reflecting on your face. Your skin is a pale deathly white, and if I didn't do this so often, I'd worry. I want your skin. I want your perfectly shaped nose, and your firm slim thighs and your small perked breasts and your lovely dark hair and as the first tear falls of every morning of every day, I admit to myself that I want you.

And I'd be willing to kill to get you.

But not yet, I chide and I move away silently, my wax candle burning low, burning my fingers. Not that I notice.

Maybe it'd all be better if I were really something. We both know I'm a nothing without you. I'm just the one by your side when there is no one else. The short stumpy one with bad skin. I am grossly ignored by most of the population and I keep it that way, for the sake of convenience. It came to me, one night as I warmed my blue toes on an old hot water bottle that leaked sometimes, that if I wanted to be somebody, I'd have to work for it. It wasn't that I was lazy...I was simply content to let you take the lead. Even if it meant people saying my name wrong wherever I went because they didn't think to remember it.

It didn't matter because...

And it worries me that I can no longer come up with excuses for you.

Maybe it'd all be better if I weren't this nothing. This nothing that shadows you and fallows your every step but falls away with the coming of the night like sun to the moon.

Maybe it'd all be better if I found something better. And even if I were to better myself and then go on to claim that it was for my own reasons, it'd always be for you. As everything always has been and always will remain..

If I was someone better.

If this world was better.

And we pretend we hear the truth as I smile shyly and claim I am not with a love interest when we hear it plainly said in my voice, in my eyes

But we only hear what we want to hear because that's how the world works, and I will be spiteful, though forever grateful.

I smiled when you told me I was pretty, even though we both knew you were lying and it wasn't right. Then you blinked as a slight but diffident realisation dawned and blew out the candle.

Goodnight she said, goodnight she said.