your gaze peels my skin off

I see you first. have a chance to prepare myself. hide my shame with another layer of lipstick. blink back the tears just in time.

“Hey! Isn't that him? HIM?!” I turn around, as if I don’t have a clue of who they mean, eye contact, but no smiles. sinking through the floor I order another drink.

unsolicited advice. “Find someone else tonight… Make sure you’re by yourself all night… Talk and laugh really loudly with as many people as possible… he won’t be able to take his eyes off of you!” I don’t want to be noticed by anyone. your gaze peels my skin off.

warm, crowded, freezing, noisy, too many people. buying the furies one last drink. the maenads scream of laughter. I can’t stop smiling, compulsive, plastic. knowing you’re seeing through it all, the night’s charades are for everyone else. never for you.

a thin new layer of skin, it’s been a few hours since I saw you last. aching feet. a run in my stockings, a heart as broken as when I chose my outfit this afternoon. waiting for the night bus. freezing, I’ll never be warm again.

there you are, by the red lights, the bus slows down to let a couple of cabs pass. slow motion, you look at me. you see through me, into me, naked bodies at dawn, unspoken but still broken promises. I've never been as naked as I was then, as I am now.

Comments

For My Friends

A Long Way from Known Waters Nader groaned. ” That was the worse joke I ever heard. ” He closed his eyes and shook his head. ”What? It’s a classic!” Aldon’s voice cracked as he pretended to be insulted. With a shrug, he shimmied up the railing and secured the line he was supposed to be securing. ”I’d like to hear you tell a funnier one!” His voice was almost lost on the ocean wind. Nader narrowed his eyes as he watched Aldon scurry between the lines. With a small shake of his head he went back to coiling lines and making sure they were out of the way of the crew. He missed being on the Indenel, this smaller ship was too crowded and it was near impossible to find a spot to just sit and watch the ocean. Captain Arelel was relentless in finding chores for him to do. Even if they were useless ones, like recoiling already perfectly coiled rope. ”Nader!” The Captain’s voice cracked like a whip. Nader hoped he had managed to hide his jump of surprise, but t...

A Room of One’s Own

It was Virginia Woolf who said that women need a room of their own, a room where we will be able to write (fiction more specifically). I was lucky in that respect when I began to read and then later on when I started to write poetry and prose as a teenager. I was always encouraged to both read and write, and my father would take me to the library and introduce me to the wonderful world that is Science Fiction. Growing up I was sort of an only child, I never had to share my space with anyone. Okay, the “sort of an only child”-thing might need some explaining. My older sister, by 6 years, was severely handicapped ( Retts Syndrome ), so we could never have any kind of sisterly bond or do anything together. When she was 17 she died from heart failure, leaving my parents and I to continue life without her. Yes, it was an easier life because she needed so much help and we could never take any long trips; or if we did my parents had their hands full with her and sometimes I was l...

I should have known better …

Last week was my husbands last week of summer holiday and I had thought that with him wanting to be as much as possible with the kids I could get some writing done. Yeah right! Who was I kidding! Tuesday morning I woke with a sore throat and a few hours after that my voice was gone So instead of sitting down at my laptop, I lay flat out on the sofa drinking tea and feeling sorry for myself. The day after Pumpkin started to sneeze, and we had some fun nights with a very fussy baby resulting in me feeling even more poorly. All the writing and editing I had planned didn’t happen, but I did get to write some poetry.

Viking Girl Scribbles

Search This Blog