:: Anthology ::

Some days you sit squarely in the malady of my memories, the fabled Arabian prince encased in black marble. Like a bird of paradise in a square full of pigeons, you are a petulant presence, your winged insolence colourful and chafing. I could never take flight with you―as far as rancid romance goes, we are both firmly caged in, perched on putrid possibilities of what-could-have-beens. And so we sing of serendipity with languid longing.

Some days it even feels like a punishment―when strains of songs and parts of phrases (yours and mine, and ours) slip in and out of my mind with the careless charm of remembrance. I despise the predicability―and uselessness―of melancholy, and so I think of you and smile, rather than risk the bitter burn of missing you. Your little catchphrases. The way you laugh. Your lingering warmth. All condensed now, into stroboscope stories blinking indifferently in my inbox once in a blue funk moon.

Romance―don't you just hate the word―is sometimes really nothing more that a vivacious splatter of vagary, a thought-trance spinning yarns of pretty pictures. I don't want to be your Mona Lisa. Someone else can stay framed in that sort of divine felicity for you to visit once in a while; I don't want it.

(And what do you want? asked a voice; I turned down the lights and put on my sad music, and I stared out at the undying night and ached the amaranthine ache of my broken loves.)

***

I called A last night, on a whim. He was impossibly gentle, as always, his voice full of boyish polish. I liked the fact that our conversations didn't have to make sense―the earmark of a longtime friendship. Once, I think, he had wanted our friendship bear the brand of romance; now I think he realises that I am much more worthy as a friend than I can ever be as a lover.

'Revenge of the jilted?' he teased with caustic compassion, when I mentioned that I didn't have the stomach for love.

I laughed into the shadows of my room―I imagined though, my eyes must be bright. 'No―I'm just on a diet,' I said.

'Good,' said my sapient artist, 'it was a long race and you must be tired from running.'

'Do you think I've become cold―indifferent?' T's recent comments hung like a ragged fog in the air.

A slight pause; I heard nothing for a while except the silken rustle of lead on paper. He was sketching, I think. And he was, because he said, suddenly, 'It's like sketching sometimes, you know? Lines and spaces. Love and spaces. When do you cross the line? When can you? And space is a difficult concept to grasp.'

I grinned into my phone. 'Thank you,'

For this sort of understanding―so cryptic, so immaterial to some―is rare and precious to me. This is the sort of understanding that the one who left can never comprehend, and the one that has yet to come must live up to. It's unfair, almost―for the loves that I've lost and the loves that may never come―it's unfair that I'm such an emotional whore, that it's always the unnamed and unspoken that attracts me, that you could be a perfect prince, but yet I prefer the bankrupt passion of a pauper. I can be such a crass cliché, but for it's an ensurience I have no excuse for.

'Beauty begets beauty,' A, his voice―like his demeanor―a mellow whisper. 'Nothing to thank.' He broke out into a song, sweet and slow. I felt sleep calling. And that's why you must remain close, in the distance. Because you can never sing me to sleep.