West Coast
The west coast air is warm, wrapping around me like a comforting blanket as the California sun finally begins to set. Back home, the sun is already below the horizon, the sky is painted with black velvet, pinpoints of stars are shining through the darkness below, the trees are probably whistling as a cool wind trickles through the valley.
My temporary home is an apartment, huddled behind a palm tree-lined street. Each morning I watch the sun rise from the small balcony, and each night I watch the sun set; it dips down, gradually lower and lower, sending the palm trees and houses across from me into an onyx silhouette before disappearing completely and allowing the stars to take their rightful thrones.
I’m still not at home here, but if my surroundings can’t make me feel like home, then her voice will suffice for now.
"It can’t be that bad,” she smiles at me, her face aglow on my phone’s screen.
I shrug my shoulders, “It’s not bad… I just never thought I’d end up here,” I say quietly.
Inside I have tea brewing, I have my curling iron heating up, I have my dress laid down flat on my bed— I have a life, ready and waiting to be lived. Everything in my life is ready to be put into place, ready for the plot to take off, ready for the story to begin— except for me, the main character.
She returns my confession with a sigh, “I never thought you would either…”
It’s there, right then, a flicker of sadness in her voice, that passing moment in her eyes. In those few seconds, there’s the nostalgia that rushes back to me in a whirlwind, straight through my brain, traveling downstairs to my heart. A simple combination of those six words, expertly drafted together, coming from her lips, could do that to me. She could make me feel all of the emotions ever written about, she could make me feel everything in my body at its utmost intensity. That was just what she did to me, it’s what she’s always done to me. Even after all these years, I still feel just as I did when I was a naive teenager, with my whole life ahead of me, unsure if this scary feeling was the mythical idea of “love.”
Years later, I sit thousands of miles across the country with the conclusion that yes, the jumbled rope of knots in my stomach that formed while basking in her presence and the choir of tropical birds that harmonized in my head at the sound of her voice, was indeed, the myth of “love” personified.
“I miss you.”
The words leave my mouth faster than my brain can process, before I could stop them from tumbling out, eager to reach her ears, tired of being cooped up in my mind within the cell I had confined them to.
Internally, I scold myself for being so brazen, but I’m also so used to myself that it isn’t a surprise my inner thoughts would host a marathon to get out of me. I’m sure it isn’t a surprise to her either.
I wore my heart on my sleeve when it came to her. She ripped it from my heart, I carefully sewed it back together, onto my sleeve, always there, fresh and bloody, beating to the rhythm of my feelings for her, always ready to pump loudly, always ready to love boldly. No matter what facade I would pull to mask the truth during times of gut-wrenching vulnerability, she knew me well enough to see through its diaphanous nature. She’d tear off my mask, remind me who I was and that maybe being so transparent wasn’t a curse.
She was my antithesis— able to conceal her thoughts and feelings for extended periods of time before finally caving. I was always tip-toeing around, wondering and waiting for the ice to melt, secretly hoping that whatever intuitions I was having would prove true and I could sink down under into her depths with no momentous cracking required.
Sometimes my gut-instinct was right, other times it was wrong. Either I would never feel the need to walk on ice again, I wanted nothing more than to dance through fields of flowers we’d plant together, or I would create my own, icy home, a cave inside that I wished to never exit.
“I miss you too,” My heart skips a beat.
Times like these remind me of how much I miss her, how much I desperately miss her, and I begin to wonder whether I loathe this place for what it is, or simply because she’s not here with me. Maybe if she were here I wouldn’t mind this hell-hole; maybe it isn’t a hell-hole at all, maybe it’s paradise in disguise, but I just need an angel to show me around. Maybe her beauty could bring out the beauty of this city for me, her company could be the miraculous cure to the loneliness I had been feeling since I moved here, to this place, the first place I had been entirely alone in.
Maybe I just wanted her in my grasp again, in my orbit, close enough for comfort, far enough away for admiration.
“I should go get ready,” I say as I look at her intently. I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to go. I know she knows I don’t want to, and I secretly hope she doesn’t want me to either.
But I have to.
“You should,” she smiles warmly at me, “go, have fun.”
I roll my eyes, “Yeah, yeah, I’m sure I’ll have a lot of fun. Wish me luck?”
“Good luck.”
There’s a pause, a moment of ellipsis between us, hanging in the air. It’s almost tangible. Before I could reach out and grasp it, before I could seize the moment and push the feelings out of me, it’s gone.
She says good-bye quickly, my name sounding so beautiful clicking its way out of her mouth.
She’s gone, my screen returns to black, I’m left alone with nothing by the setting sun and an “I love you” whispering from my lips as I stare at my sad reflection.
My temporary home is an apartment, huddled behind a palm tree-lined street. Each morning I watch the sun rise from the small balcony, and each night I watch the sun set; it dips down, gradually lower and lower, sending the palm trees and houses across from me into an onyx silhouette before disappearing completely and allowing the stars to take their rightful thrones.
I’m still not at home here, but if my surroundings can’t make me feel like home, then her voice will suffice for now.
"It can’t be that bad,” she smiles at me, her face aglow on my phone’s screen.
I shrug my shoulders, “It’s not bad… I just never thought I’d end up here,” I say quietly.
Inside I have tea brewing, I have my curling iron heating up, I have my dress laid down flat on my bed— I have a life, ready and waiting to be lived. Everything in my life is ready to be put into place, ready for the plot to take off, ready for the story to begin— except for me, the main character.
She returns my confession with a sigh, “I never thought you would either…”
It’s there, right then, a flicker of sadness in her voice, that passing moment in her eyes. In those few seconds, there’s the nostalgia that rushes back to me in a whirlwind, straight through my brain, traveling downstairs to my heart. A simple combination of those six words, expertly drafted together, coming from her lips, could do that to me. She could make me feel all of the emotions ever written about, she could make me feel everything in my body at its utmost intensity. That was just what she did to me, it’s what she’s always done to me. Even after all these years, I still feel just as I did when I was a naive teenager, with my whole life ahead of me, unsure if this scary feeling was the mythical idea of “love.”
Years later, I sit thousands of miles across the country with the conclusion that yes, the jumbled rope of knots in my stomach that formed while basking in her presence and the choir of tropical birds that harmonized in my head at the sound of her voice, was indeed, the myth of “love” personified.
“I miss you.”
The words leave my mouth faster than my brain can process, before I could stop them from tumbling out, eager to reach her ears, tired of being cooped up in my mind within the cell I had confined them to.
Internally, I scold myself for being so brazen, but I’m also so used to myself that it isn’t a surprise my inner thoughts would host a marathon to get out of me. I’m sure it isn’t a surprise to her either.
I wore my heart on my sleeve when it came to her. She ripped it from my heart, I carefully sewed it back together, onto my sleeve, always there, fresh and bloody, beating to the rhythm of my feelings for her, always ready to pump loudly, always ready to love boldly. No matter what facade I would pull to mask the truth during times of gut-wrenching vulnerability, she knew me well enough to see through its diaphanous nature. She’d tear off my mask, remind me who I was and that maybe being so transparent wasn’t a curse.
She was my antithesis— able to conceal her thoughts and feelings for extended periods of time before finally caving. I was always tip-toeing around, wondering and waiting for the ice to melt, secretly hoping that whatever intuitions I was having would prove true and I could sink down under into her depths with no momentous cracking required.
Sometimes my gut-instinct was right, other times it was wrong. Either I would never feel the need to walk on ice again, I wanted nothing more than to dance through fields of flowers we’d plant together, or I would create my own, icy home, a cave inside that I wished to never exit.
“I miss you too,” My heart skips a beat.
Times like these remind me of how much I miss her, how much I desperately miss her, and I begin to wonder whether I loathe this place for what it is, or simply because she’s not here with me. Maybe if she were here I wouldn’t mind this hell-hole; maybe it isn’t a hell-hole at all, maybe it’s paradise in disguise, but I just need an angel to show me around. Maybe her beauty could bring out the beauty of this city for me, her company could be the miraculous cure to the loneliness I had been feeling since I moved here, to this place, the first place I had been entirely alone in.
Maybe I just wanted her in my grasp again, in my orbit, close enough for comfort, far enough away for admiration.
“I should go get ready,” I say as I look at her intently. I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to go. I know she knows I don’t want to, and I secretly hope she doesn’t want me to either.
But I have to.
“You should,” she smiles warmly at me, “go, have fun.”
I roll my eyes, “Yeah, yeah, I’m sure I’ll have a lot of fun. Wish me luck?”
“Good luck.”
There’s a pause, a moment of ellipsis between us, hanging in the air. It’s almost tangible. Before I could reach out and grasp it, before I could seize the moment and push the feelings out of me, it’s gone.
She says good-bye quickly, my name sounding so beautiful clicking its way out of her mouth.
She’s gone, my screen returns to black, I’m left alone with nothing by the setting sun and an “I love you” whispering from my lips as I stare at my sad reflection.
Comments
Post a Comment