I Am Wrecked
i am wrecked
I wake up and it is the era of the media. The television is on from last night, mumbling incomprehensible requirements to the disarray of tired eyes and tangled limbs that is my self this morning. There is one thought in my mind and I stumble uncertainly towards where the telephone receiver is hanging off the hook at my bedside. I see something from the corner of my eye and I stop, about to grasp the telephone, not taking my eyes from the doorway. Everything is different now. We are not the same. The dial tone is deafening in the background.
The sofa is tattered, worn through by afternoons spent drinking our daydreams into animated oblivions.We would embrace the things we hate, wasting time together with our failings and a bottle of wine. We would speak only the truth, even within our fabricated realities. We would wish not to rule the world since we were the world; we would wish not for escapes since there was nothing to go to. But we are different now; we are not the same. We are practical and our idealistic dreams seem distant and hopeless.
Betty is sitting on this tattered sofa, legs tucked beneath her and a cigarette held lazily between her first and middle fingers. The smoke curls upwards, dispersing across the ceiling that we would spend evenings gazing at in wonder. I am scrutinizing her appearance and she is staring through me, as she always has. A question has been plaguing my mind, eating at my carefree desires like a cancer. I know what her answer will be and I do not want to ask the question. I try to suppress the thoughts.
"Where do we go from here?" I hear the words fall clumsily from my mouth, though I try to stop them. She will says what she always says. Betty is in the present. She does not dwell on the past, she does not think of the future. She does not believe in the 'we' that I see us as. To Betty, she is herself and I am me; we are near, yet we are separate.
"Don't talk to me about the future," she raises the nicotine to her lips and inhales slowly, eyes closed, "don't talk to me about the future, don't talk to me about love. I don't have time for it like everybody else does. I can't relate."
She opens her eyes, crushes her cigarette into the ashtray and stands up, saying a cold goodbye before walking out. I watch the door swing shut behind her and I reach for the telephone receiver once again, eyes staring at the invisible exit sign in the doorway. "Betty... I need you, I miss you, I'm so alone without you," then I hang up. Betty is always right; we are near, yet we are separate. And I know she hates to be alone.
In my mind, we do talk about the future and about love. We know why it is we used to need each other. We talk about our past failures and we write novels about our flaws, making impossible promises to departing buses while saving up a supply of hope for those times of solitude.
And we are bedside poets, living room revolutionaries. We scar blank apartment walls with question mark carvings and compose music to the static of a disconnected television. As the emperors and monarchs of our modern world tumble from their thrones of Styrofoam cups, we emerge from the rubble as artists, painting dialogue to be memorized off of the backs of our hands. We gaze at the stars, curious and caffeinated, with drum hits and modern rock in our minds, penning broken-record symphonies for ourselves and ourselves only.
But Betty is gone and-- this time-- I know she will not be back. I light a cigarette of my own and step out onto the apartment balcony. People, like ants, crawl through the city streets, not looking up from their daily lives. Together, we are each more alone than by ourselves. She will not be back, not for a long time. I watch the embers of the unused cigarette burn down slowly. I extinguish it on the balcony railing and think on the future as the last of the smoke disperses in the polluted city air.
"Where do we go from here?" I throw the question quietly out to the piece of the city that I can see. The answer comes back in the form of traffic and smoke and monochrome buildings. Nobody knows, but everybody cares. The mid-afternoon sun is covered in a layer of gray clouds and I realize that, with her lack of love, her dismissal of the future and her addiction to words and cigarettes, Betty knows no better than anybody else. She knows only the present, which is more than I could hope for but, even so, she will not be back.
As I walk inside again, I realize that I don't know where to begin. As I walk into my bedroom, I pause at the bedside and I realize that Betty is gone.
I sleep and it is the era of the media. The television stains the walls with grotesque shadows.
The sofa is tattered, worn through by afternoons spent drinking our daydreams into animated oblivions.We would embrace the things we hate, wasting time together with our failings and a bottle of wine. We would speak only the truth, even within our fabricated realities. We would wish not to rule the world since we were the world; we would wish not for escapes since there was nothing to go to. But we are different now; we are not the same. We are practical and our idealistic dreams seem distant and hopeless.
Betty is sitting on this tattered sofa, legs tucked beneath her and a cigarette held lazily between her first and middle fingers. The smoke curls upwards, dispersing across the ceiling that we would spend evenings gazing at in wonder. I am scrutinizing her appearance and she is staring through me, as she always has. A question has been plaguing my mind, eating at my carefree desires like a cancer. I know what her answer will be and I do not want to ask the question. I try to suppress the thoughts.
"Where do we go from here?" I hear the words fall clumsily from my mouth, though I try to stop them. She will says what she always says. Betty is in the present. She does not dwell on the past, she does not think of the future. She does not believe in the 'we' that I see us as. To Betty, she is herself and I am me; we are near, yet we are separate.
"Don't talk to me about the future," she raises the nicotine to her lips and inhales slowly, eyes closed, "don't talk to me about the future, don't talk to me about love. I don't have time for it like everybody else does. I can't relate."
She opens her eyes, crushes her cigarette into the ashtray and stands up, saying a cold goodbye before walking out. I watch the door swing shut behind her and I reach for the telephone receiver once again, eyes staring at the invisible exit sign in the doorway. "Betty... I need you, I miss you, I'm so alone without you," then I hang up. Betty is always right; we are near, yet we are separate. And I know she hates to be alone.
In my mind, we do talk about the future and about love. We know why it is we used to need each other. We talk about our past failures and we write novels about our flaws, making impossible promises to departing buses while saving up a supply of hope for those times of solitude.
And we are bedside poets, living room revolutionaries. We scar blank apartment walls with question mark carvings and compose music to the static of a disconnected television. As the emperors and monarchs of our modern world tumble from their thrones of Styrofoam cups, we emerge from the rubble as artists, painting dialogue to be memorized off of the backs of our hands. We gaze at the stars, curious and caffeinated, with drum hits and modern rock in our minds, penning broken-record symphonies for ourselves and ourselves only.
But Betty is gone and-- this time-- I know she will not be back. I light a cigarette of my own and step out onto the apartment balcony. People, like ants, crawl through the city streets, not looking up from their daily lives. Together, we are each more alone than by ourselves. She will not be back, not for a long time. I watch the embers of the unused cigarette burn down slowly. I extinguish it on the balcony railing and think on the future as the last of the smoke disperses in the polluted city air.
"Where do we go from here?" I throw the question quietly out to the piece of the city that I can see. The answer comes back in the form of traffic and smoke and monochrome buildings. Nobody knows, but everybody cares. The mid-afternoon sun is covered in a layer of gray clouds and I realize that, with her lack of love, her dismissal of the future and her addiction to words and cigarettes, Betty knows no better than anybody else. She knows only the present, which is more than I could hope for but, even so, she will not be back.
As I walk inside again, I realize that I don't know where to begin. As I walk into my bedroom, I pause at the bedside and I realize that Betty is gone.
I sleep and it is the era of the media. The television stains the walls with grotesque shadows.