Every Man I Fall For

“Well, you look a little worse for wear.”

It was the first thing he said to me all day, and we were lining up to go in to double English in Period 5.

I hadn’t realized I’d been waiting to talk to him until he finally did.

“I’m okay” I reply quietly.

I’m too busy noticing his eyes to really elaborate on that. They’re really very pretty; a moss green, ringed in darker tones and shot with gold…

“...Oliver? Are you listening?”

Pretty eyes, pretty voice…

“What?”

The line starts moving and he turns away to enter the classroom. I suddenly feel very tired, as if my limbs are weighted down, and my movements become jerky as I stumble through the door. I’m the last in.

I slip through the rows and in to my seat, feeling a few pairs of eyes trained on me. His are the strongest, though, from across the room, and it makes me shiver. With shaking hands I pull a fresh sheet of loose leaf from my disorganized folder. It stares at me, taunting. Blank. Memories to be made.

“Okay everyone,” I look up at Mrs Parsons begins, “in the first lesson today we’re going to start work on our creative writing portfolios. I want you to write two or three separate pieces of writing, and then you’ll each read your best out to the class at the end. You’ve got fifty minutes.”

This appears to be the end of the instruction, and everyone reluctantly stares at their blank pages, pens tapping against teeth as we begin. All the traces of my earlier lethargy are gone, as I feverishly scribble down all I can, emptying my head on to solid ground.

Tribal dances and primitive language, I write. Mary Magdelene with your fingers and Judas Escariot with your tongue. Writhe- I promptly cross out everything I’ve just written when I realise how my sexual frustration has begun to permeate every aspect of my life. I laugh quietly to myself as I picture the face of the marker if I were to hand this in with my portfolio, and then I turn my thoughts to a subtler grounding, as I glance up and catch the delicate posture of the boy two seats back and three seats down.

Lonely little star,
mother forgot to tell you
that the quiet boys hurt the most.

Fifty minutes later, ink-stained and cramping, Mrs Parsons calls for pens down. She calls us out one by one, and it becomes blindingly apparent that some of us haven’t taken this as seriously as others.

“This poem is called ‘Cheese’,” Doug Bartlett announces. The front row chuckle jovially, and he puffs out his chest before continuing.

“Oh cheese,
so yellow and crumbly,
when I see you
my tummy gets rumbly.
But when I eat you
my girlfriend gets sassy,
‘cause the extra protein
makes me a little gassy.”

He ends with a bow, and Mrs Parsons smiles wryly.

“I’ll be interested to see your mark, Mr Bartlett. Mr Motley?”

Thom stands quickly and walks briskly to the front.

“Um...” he begins eloquently, before looking at the teacher, “Mine’s a haiku.”

Mrs Parsons smiles encouragingly, and he turns to face the front, eyes closed, no notes, as if the words he is saying are falling from his heart out his mouth and in to the air around him.

“Silent melody
This symphony in my head
The sound of your voice.”

His eyes snap open and I watch as his narrow pupils expand and adjust to the light of the classroom. He looks quickly at Mrs Parsons for approval, before scampering back to his desk.

His poem was lovely, and as I thought about it and the truth behind it, I felt my heart expand. Because I’d felt like that before, only once before, and the memories seemed warmer through their selective filter, and I remembered sitting on the phone with you for hours on my bed and letting your voice give me the sort of sunshine that summer didn’t offer, thinking about your fingers as they played with a coffee cup, and the light on your hair. And then it’s not warm anymore, very suddenly, because I’m remembering that day and that phone call and that time when your voice didn’t remind me of grass and Aeroguard.

and then time seems to go so quickly before it’s me, it’s my turn, and I push my chair back silently and walk down the aisle on the sides of my feet because somehow this moment seems as fragile as a little bird with glass wings, and I think if I break it I will shatter as well.

When I stand up the front my heart is hammering and the paper is shaking like a leaf in my hands and I clear my throat before I start, voice smooth.

“You left in the Autumn,
the Summer wheat razed to the ground.
I was, too
did you notice?
And all those days we
wasted
without meaning to,
and all those hours we
killed
waiting for someone to tell us
that it was OK

and you swore that
you were breaking
in that violet hour.

You shine on, past the dusk.
Lonely little star,
mother forgot to tell you
that the quiet boys hurt the most.”

And I let the silence in the room cover me like a blanket as half of me falls asleep in the comfort of the expulsion.