Numbers are not my forte
I tried counting until eight
I gave up and tried again
Then I reached eleven
But my lips were thin,
And cold, and —
“What the fuck is wrong — what am I saying . . .”
Right then, she scribbled those lines with a red ink.
As imperfect as human could be, she hated it when misery and being vulnerable were all that was left to grip. Every other thing slipped through her fingers like water, like sand in the beach. She always loved the beach and the idea of getting tanned. But her skin has been marked with heartburn instead of sun’s kisses.
It was time for her to write again. Whatever that was left for her to feel should be quite a lot of inspiration for her words. She has always been good with that. Unless when her ink dried out.
Months passed after she last wrote about something. Something that came out of her like tears or breathing. Something close enough to be called feeling. Because she had so many of that. To tangle with words was her way of pouring it away.
Maybe because she didn’t want to have it for too long.
Maybe she was scared to get lost.
Maybe it was a cue for her to feel something else.
The answer was never direct. She still wondered around in her mind and stares. She would be one of those bookstore visitors, checking out the old untouched and unloved ones with fragile paperback covers. But no, she wouldn’t take any. What she wanted was to romanticize the nostalgia from their smell and touch. Yet, she couldn’t quite call herself and old soul.
Her experiments with her own verses said that everything about her was new. That young girl with drowsy dark brown eyes — the ones people mistook as comfortable. She would pull them, let them feel that ease — all of that while she consumed every single affection and crave for more.
And everything about the city was new to her. The people, roads, habits, and coffee shops — she has never seen any, never felt like wanting to know each narrow alley that might lead her to unexpected humble surprises.
But her memory about the city was like those old books. She knew where to find them. They had been there for so long. Sensing that she would spend time roaming her heart in the city was not something unexpected. She knew she would let herself be taken by the romance.
Free; unconfined, unrestricted, unlocked.
Because she has broken her walls down. The past which she thought was honey-like-syrup was even bitter than her first glass of whisky.
It stung her eyes and numbed her senses.
And she wanted to feel again.
To live, she wrote her stories down in proses and poems. Sometimes it caused a severe headache in the middle of the night. When she tried to cover her head with her pillow, battling the invisible weigh with the physical, that was when she decided. To ease, to write again, she needed to feel. As painful or beautiful as it should be.
And the city was perfect.
People fell in love every hour. The nuance of busy streets and noisy hang-out places didn’t make it less romantic. She was annoyingly hopeless that way.
“It will be worth the while.”
The years she would spend living and adapting might teach her a thing or two. Usually it was the people. Usually it would be her friends. Whether or not she was ready to let loose a little would be a question to be answered later.
As soon as she stepped the city ground for the first time, as she felt the sun blazing above her head, it was on. The search was on.
She got her book in her bag. No idea when she would actually write again, but the time would come eventually. There were still so many blank pages to fill. So many things left to experience. And she hadn’t got enough.
There were familiar faces and names, but she decided to keep them at bay for some time. Past — she tried not to hang on to it. She had not yet known how to write a perfect ending line. A satisfying one, at least.
Let her take her time. She would try to define everything with her own words. She would try getting some comfort to rest upon when she was weary. She made her decision — she was taking her own risk.
***
This is how she feels herself and gets lost in the city where she might realize her true feelings. No matter how obscure they are, these are the only words she let come through from the cracked lips. This is her bare feelings rising from within.
