YOUR BODY IS AN OCEAN

LOVE AND OTHER EXPERIMENTS

BY NIKITA GILL Nikita Gill is a twenty four year old girl who lives in the
extremes of laughter and sadness. She likes people who live somewhere on
the brink as well and that is who she draws inspiration from. If you
recognise yourself in here, you should try and remember the tall, lanky girl
who was somewhere in your vicinity a while ago. If you recognise yourself
in here, thank you for the inspiration. Copyright 2012c

Nikita Gill

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the author.

Cover Design by Nikita Gill

For my parents, who have always been my guiding light. For

my brother, who is my other half. For my friends, who know
me better than I would like to admit. Everybody has a secret
world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean
everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the
outside, inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent,
wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world.
Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.
Neil Gaiman

Content
Introduction. 08
Foreword by David Gauthier. 09
Three Almost Fairytales

A Little Bit of Wonderland. 16 A Rose in Oz. 18

Forever Neverland. 20

Lists by Fiverse

It is Impossible to. 23 Pros and Cons. 24

Seventeen in Phases. 25 Seasonal Liar. 27
Why I Hate Romantic Comedies. 29

Conversations by Tens

Inside Out. 32
On Wishes. 35
Issues. 37
The Wanting. 39 Textbook Breakup. 41 Constructive Criticism. 43
Starving. 45
After Words. 47 Cinnamon Souls. 49 Austenesque. 52

Fifteen on Humanity

Obsession. 55
Second Language English. 57 Bloodline. 59
This is Not a Story about Suicide. 60 Capillaries. 62
Insomnia. 64
Repopulation. 66
Bones. 68
Fragments. 70
I Bet You Got This on Film. 72 Her Nails. 74
Six. 76
Trust. 78
Spineless. 79
Growth. 81
Introduction
At some point, no matter how obscure this little thing is, someone is going
to ask me why I wrote it.

I wrote it to prove something to myself. That when you truly love

something, at some point, you have to sit down and just do it. I wrote it for
every single time I have thought, ‘that would make a great story‘. I wrote it
for the people who told me I could write. I wrote it for the people who told
me I couldn’t write. I wrote it because of Neil Gaiman, and Jane Austen,
and William Wordsworth and Sylvia Plath. I wrote it for the seconds by
metaphors I have let pass me by.

But most importantly, more important than any of what is listed above, I
wrote this book for you.
Foreword
David Gauthier
Lose track of sight. From your mind, take flight.

Travel out your forehead, about sweat from a day much too long, past
smells travelling a trail forced crooked when you once fell; onward (right)
beneath the twitching lid that knows the knife; moving down over quivering
left by the first lips not your own; further, toward a jaw no longer even; fall
to dents imprinted by thumbs of those you were meant to love; sink in
through the flesh and skin; glide along the raspy remnants of the first
inhale; and stop a while – deep, where there is no light to offer comfort
amidst screaming from the palpitating coffin of your inner child.

You didn’t forget, did you – when the future became this?

We (all of us) face our trials and tests. We justify our plight by revising past
to sway and flow with the skill of meaning. As one navigates to their first
beginning, order seems counter to one’s being.

Memory is associative. Musings are tangential. Maxim is mangled.

We focus on the misplaced bread crumbs of history – hoping never again to

stray from the prize at the center. Arrival yields deceit. The ginger-bread
house is occupied by the elderly cannibals and wolves dressed as sheep.
Some settle for what they find while others sigh toward the exit on the other
side.

How can we find ourselves if we do not know our purpose?

Walking tear-stained floor-boards of life’s labyrinth is surely a test designed

for those with stone hearts and madness. Lament: all are invited and none
shall pass. Run the wheel, press the second button for a meal, and there is
electroshock beyond the seventh seal. Remember it all and hope it repeats;
proceed toward an end you perceive. Be warned of twists and turns you will
not believe while trying not to weep or fall to your knees. Wasn’t there
somewhere this was supposed to lead?

Submitted for approval, an alternate notion. It’s not a maze, but an ocean.1

Nikita Gill offers a collection of fragments and shards from her daily bread
numbering roughly 33 (sar*zan as some might read). Be they fact, fiction,
or tricks of memory; be advised that what you see will be the truth in life as
it is only found somewhere between.

1 You must ascend before you can breathe11

“We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop
in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing
something.”
-- Mother Teresa

Some, be it by choice or by need, specialize in humanity.

YOUR BODY IS AN OCEAN
LOVE AND OTHER EXPERIMENTS

BY NIKITA GILL
Three Almost Fairytales
A Little Bit of Wonderland
Her name was Alyssa, and when she was nine her mother built her
wonderland. After being raised on a healthy diet of Charles Dickens, Enid
Blyton and J.M. Barrie, it seemed like the only course of action. She created
it out of paper, each scene indispensably, indisputably perfect in its
imperfection.

And she did it because Alyssa was terrified of the idea of falling through a
rabbit hole, into a place that allows magic only when you are confused.
Mothers do the most impractical, exhausting things to show how much they
love their children. It seemed a pity that it was this very effort that kept
Alyssa up all night, staring at the paper people like they were coming to get
her.

(If Alyssa’s mother knew, she would have spent all her time trying to
explain to the little girl that it wasn’t just paper people she should be afraid
of.)

God appeared to have a sense of humour when little Alice became Alyssa’s
best friend. She lives across the street, her hair always wild when she would
run over in the same little blue dress and tell Alyssa the strangest stories.
Having understood that paper people were no longer meant to be feared,
Alyssa listened with wide eyes to her paper story loving friend, becoming a
part of a landscape that housed fairies and pixies and odd little men with
funny hats and talking animals.

It accepted her into its folds gradually and in a tree house made by Alice’s
father, they tried to understand why ravens actually hated writing desks and
how hares would actually hate tea, but perhaps love coffee.
(This was before Alice’s mother left and her eyes broke, and they grew to
understand that people grew apart better with pain than distance.)
-

James liked to drink coffee and wear funny hats and gave people rabbits as
gifts. And he had never read anything about wonderland. So of course,
Alyssa had to fall in love with him. She counted the droplets of water on his
eyelashes and wondered about how someone who has promised himself to
her so effortlessly could possibly be seventy two point eight percent water;
all this because water was so easy to drain away.

She called him the Mad Hatter. He never quite understood the reason
behind the name.
(That’s the thing with being in wonderland. It never really likes to
acknowledge its own existence.)
A Rose in Oz
Rose is a girl a lot like Dorothy with big dreams in a little place, and a
house that often falls apart. She is named for her mother’s most favourite
flower and often kisses a wishing star before it turns into a shooting star.
She has never been chased by tornados, but she does like chasing them. One
day, if she is very careful, she will get swept away in one. She doesn’t
understand girls like Cinderella who don’t actually like hard work and
would never give up her voice for a man like the Little Mermaid.

It was no wonder then, that the mirror hates Rose more than it would ever
hate Dorothy. Because she argues with her mother, fights with her father,
and most importantly, does not have a little dog like Toto.

[What she has is a nasty black cat who doesn’t seem to like her much either,
but that’s neither here nor there.]
-

Rose always had wanted to know what the yellow brick road was like. So
she painted the road on her arm so she could trail it every night before she
slept. It somehow helped that the emerald green tattoo of her name on her
wrist seemed to glow in the moonlight, quite like Oz would. When she
awakens in the mornings, she pulled her knees up to her chest, so she could
see how her ribs form as though her skin will burst, just so she can put a
pencil through the backs of her knees and hold it there, twirling it.

When she twirls a hundred, she stops and stands, hold her breath and stares
at herself in the bathroom mirror, so she could count her ribs slowly. And
then she trails the yellow brick road all over again.

[It’s amazing how she has done this every single morning for seven years,
and still manages to miscount her ribs, each and every time.]
-

Rose sings to a boy named Bradley, and she does it only because he has the
kind of hands that can cover her eyes without letting the sunlight through.
And when she finally comes back to bed when he is in it, he touches her
face rubs his rough thumb against her cheekbone. His hand finds its way
from her face to his hips and I know why. And for a while, she supposes it
is not too much to ask for a love that is determined by the shape of her hip
bones.

That is before Bradley uses his hands to understand the shape of someone
else’s face on the only day she forgets to follow the yellow brick road.

[ And it is at that moment, that Rose decided she would rather be the
Wicked Witch of the West. Because being Dorothy would always leave her
back in Kansas at the end.]
Forever Neverland
Jenna hated Tinkerbell. She hated her because she had wings and she could
fly whereas Jenna stayed on the ground, catching fireflies. The fireflies
made it easy because they knew she would let them go. She would stare at
their radiant light in awe and try and understand how something so little can
shine so very bright.

She tried to pretend the bread she had in the mornings was ice cream
flavoured, and even imagined her little brother had never been taken from
them but had been enthralled and forever lost in Neverland. When she tried
to explain this to her mother, she would not look at her, usually by leaving
the room.

For a little girl who had the hope of the world resting quite easily on her
head as a crown, she knew. She knew that one day, he would come for her
and maybe, maybe they could be together again.

She slept on a bed of green, with a desk of wood and a massive window that
made her love rooftops and the sky. She didn’t want to meet Peter Pan. She
wanted to BE him, and lead a group of boys who were more lost that she
could ever be. So lost that they were found.

Jenna’s mind was made up when she saw the missing boy posters all over
milk cartons. She knew what she would be when she grew up. She would
be Peter Pan.

( The irony of this never quite occurred to her until her twenty second
birthday, when the boy she loved and knew to be less than perfect, became
perfect by losing himself to her forever.)
List of Fiverse
It is Impossible to
1. Count every single twinkle in the sky, or your father’s eye.
2. Meet every person on earth, and still know how to love them all
3. Keep count of every drop of rain, every time it pours.
4. Grow a tail, (Even with lessons from the cat) or wings (Even with lessons
from the birds).
5. Not to love your dog, especially when he greets you like you are the light
in his world.
6. To see the back of your own head without a mirror, and just hope there
isn’t a hole where your brain is meant to be.)
7. Have a whole month of Sundays and not wish the medication was
working when you are doing nothing.
8. Sketch a pair of wings on a pig, and try and make it fly.
9. Wish Christmas could come in July just so you could see him sooner.
10. Make you believe that I love you, even if you have never chosen to love
yourself.
Pros and Cons
1. I am not writing a list of things that will make me hate you, as you
supposed, but more a list that would help me move on. I always hated how
you were very practical that way, even about emotional distress. I am not
writing about the trouble with you being your incorrigible logic, your lack
of tact.

2. I am not writing this because I have a habit of doing what you say, and
perhaps, just maybe this would give me closure.
3. I am not going to write about how beautiful your mouth is, and how it
seems like something that would have been kisses by an angel.
4. I am not going to write about how your voice tremors when you speak of
loneliness.
5. I am not going to write about how you are worthy of songs and dances
and plays to be written for your lack of wonder at war, sex or alcohol, you
aren’t that interesting.
6. I am not going to write about the day you sat me down and dragged me
down with you, just so you could complain about how much I loved angel
wings and sketches of pretty eyes and generous eyebrows.
7. I am not going to write about pros or cons because honestly, I don’t see
any point in giving you what you want anymore.
8. I am going to write about us. And it won’t be the list you asked for. It
will be a novel of a thousand pages, embedded in a million tears.
Seventeen in Phases
1.

It was because her parents had named her for the grandmother who had
broken her mother’s heart. The grandmother who was supposed to have
melted from her birth and hadn’t.

That was why her mother barely looked at her. That was why she called her
‘girl’.

That was why she liked to pretend she was the quiet woman in the
background of an old black and white movie. Because everything here was
like an old black and white movie.

[And if she really looked back, her mother had never appreciated the
elegance of the 1950s enough.]
2.

It was because she hated surprises. The surprise she got on her sixth
birthday when her father left taught her just how a single person had the
ability of taking your soul, splitting it in two and wearing it on their breast
pocket like a white carnation waiting to die.

That was why when she lifted a book, she looked at the last page first. That
was why her namelessness had become a comfort to her.

That was why she understood how she was like a fizzy drink without the
fizz, too cold coke left on a windowsill, and a half drawn painting sitting in
the back of a sketchbook.

[ What she didn’t understand was why she never reacted when she heard a
loud noise, a sudden movement...and most importantly, by the nightmares
that crushed her chest every night.]

3.
It was because she misunderstood the kiss he gave her that night. The sky
was sparkling with diamonds, the air was thick with heat, the wind was
enough to caress their fevered skin; it was too perfect for the flawed
existence she had grown to know.

That was why when he tried to kiss her again, she asked him to kiss his
unloved flaws, his bones instead.

That was why her movements were so restricted when she touched him,
why his hand fell away when she reached for him, why he never felt guilty
for leaving her out in a storm at 3 a.m. Why she refused to let herself love
him.

She was nothing but an almost lover, an almost friend, an almost daughter.
The little bit of left over hot chocolate in a cup that had long since been
consumed.

[This is what happens when you don’t find yourself on the right side of
seventeen.]
Seasonal Liar
1.

She’s crying again and he’s watching her in silence, the way he always
does. “I love you.” he says, his eyes fixed on the table her tears are falling
so seamlessly on. She pauses to draw in a catch of air and studies him
through her broken, white fingers.

And this time, the last time, she speaks. “You’re lying.”
2.

He can’t take the onset of spring and when she walks in through the door,
looking as fresh as a summer’s eve, he broke her so slowly that she didn’t
even notice her bones were breaking.

3.

She calls him her summer love, and even when the diamond like
snowflakes fall on his face and make him blurry to look at, she thinks that
summer looks like the winter cape never has on him.

He wishes he could take her back to summer where things are sweeter and
worth so much more.
4.

Winter has always been her favourite season. Every time her lips caress the
window, sweetening the transparency with her breath. She does this less for
herself now and more for the boy on the bicycle, who crosses the path of
the red roofed, white flecked house every single day.

He lives for the foggy taste of winter in her breath, stroked with pale fingers
of temporary warmth.
5.

She wants to die. She wants to die because the sun doesn’t like to shine on
her face the way it once did and the rabbits don’t come out and play and the
little boy next door doesn’t call around anymore and everything should look
better with glitter but it just doesn’t.

6.

She’s crying again and he’s watching her in silence, the way he always
does. “I love you.” he says, his eyes fixed on the table her tears are falling
so seamlessly on. She pauses to draw in a catch of air and studies him
through her broken, white fingers.

And this time, for the first time ever, she speaks. “You’re lying.”
Why I Hate Romantic Comedies
1.

Because they say that for every single boy who counts the stars, there is a
little girl who is wishing upon one. (And they never mention what happens
after the stars fade into morning and the other falls into oblivion)

2.

Because they say that people fall in love when the time is right, they are
true to each other and are ready to be together. (But no one ever mentions
how she is so damaged she can barely think, and he is so cynical that he
may never be ready.)

3.

Because they insist that your soulmate is going to be a good, kind, caring
human being who will love you from the bottom of their hearts. (This is due
to the fact that even if there is someone for everyone, bad people are
immune to the soulmate theory.)

4.

Because they always have a happy ending (And real life begins after the sun
has set and she has realized that he may not be everything she hoped for and
he begins to have second thoughts about commitment..)

5.
Because everything is assured in its predictability (And the trouble with
predictability is that there is no room to be surprised.)
6.

Because there are such a things as a big romantic gesture that makes
everything all right. (And no one talks about what happens if she says no
and that he’s made too many mistakes and her love for him has dried up.)
7.

Because even if I hate that every single thing they say is, and believe
untrue, there is something that draws me back to them every single time.
(It’s that stupid, tiny, romantic broken bone in my body that one day, I will
find someone who tastes like gold, talks like silver and has a solid platinum
heart too.)
Conversations by Tens
Inside Out
“I think I wear my soul inside out.”
“What?”
“My soul. It’s inside out.”
“That’s…a strange thing to say.”
“I have all the symptoms though.”
“And what are the symptoms of this…disea-”
“It’s not a disease.”
“All right. What are the symptoms, then?”

“I care too much about all the wrong things, I worry about odd things, my
heart breaks too easily and my brain feels a little too asymmetrical to the
things that are supposed to be fun.”

“Fun?”
“You know…parties and alcohol and…normal things. Like that.” “Oh.”
“What?”
“Nothing. What do you care too much about?”
“Everything. Global warming. The whales. Aliens. Israel. Sarajevo. The
Ozone-”
“I get it. Everything that counts and you can do nothing about by yourself.”
“You sound cynical.”
“You sound paranoid.”
“That’s mean.”
“It’s just honest. What worries you?””The fact that you are too self involved
to notice.”
“Notice what?”
“If I disappear.”
“…”
“It’s true.”
“You idiot. Ofcourse I will notice if you disappear. I’d notice it a hell of a
lot.”
“…why?”
“Because then who would worry about global warming, and the whales, and
the aliens and Israel and Sarajevo and- why are you smiling?” “Because I
figured something out about you.”
“What’s that?” “You wear your soul inside out too.”
On Wishes
“I wish you wouldn’t be that way.”
“That is the thing with wishes. They’re flimsy, broken and unfixed.”
“You say that. But I have some that came true.”
“What kinds were those?”
“I wished for bigger feet, and smaller eyes and longer hair. They all came
true.”
“You wished to grow up and we all have to grow up. Our bones and cells,
sort of, force us to.”
“And you? Did you ever wish for anything?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because my father told me to not believe in wishes.”
“Because?” “Because he didn’t believe in them.”
“Do you always do what your father says?”
“Yes. I never stand in the rain, or wear red socks, or eat chocolate, or
believe in wishes.”
“Oh. Well. At least I know now.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I think I shall fall in love with a boy who wears red socks, hates chocolate
and refuses to kiss me in the rain.”
“And why is that?” “Because what is life without a challenge?”
Issues
“I have issues.”
“That’s a revelation.”
“No. Seriously. I have issues.”
“All right. I’ll bite. What’s going on?”
“I don’t think I’m ever going to find someone who’ll love me.”
“…”
“What?”
“You aren’t serious, right?”
“I am glad my pain makes you so incredulous.”
“All right, let me try this again. Who am I?”
“You’re-”

“Don’t answer that. That was rhetorical. I am the girl who spends hours
huddled in a corner of a library, trying to find what you love the most about
Marlow, just so I can write you a poem worthy of Shakespeare. I’ve made
books my lovers, hours my enemies and you the only story.”

“You do that for-”

“I am the girl who will split her fingers in two and let the ink fall on pages
and pages, just so I can paint you a review. All this just so it may make
more sense to you, than that art teacher who disregards your Rubenesque,
Rembrandt inspired paintings everyday. And I don’t even like classical art.”

“Why-”

“I am the girl has watched you break her, over and over and over again, but
I am still here. My wrists are thinner, my spine arched in burden of the
unspoken and the fact that I am terrified to touch an instrument anymore,
simply because you hate the idea of a song that is about heartbreak. And
heartbreak is all I can write about.”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because I am done being in love with you.”
“Why?”
“I am in love with someone else. Someone who needs it more than you.”
“Who?!” “Me.”
The Wanting
“All right. I have decided we can’t fall in love.”
“Huh?”
“I mean, it just doesn’t make sense for us to be in love.”
“A little late for that don’t you think?”
“You mean we’re already in knee deep.”
“Yeah.”
“We could wade out.”
“…”
“Look, it just won’t work.”
“What on earth is wrong with you?”
“What on earth is wrong with me? I will tell you whats wrong with me, I
want it all.”

“As in?” “I want to have children with your eyes and your smile, my
mother’s hair and your mother’s nose. I want them to sing like you, and
write like your mother and paint like my mother. And I want them to have
both our fathers’ fortitude. I want good strong boys who are god fearing and
kind, and lovely, kind girls who are never without a book in their hands. I
want our families to love and understand and accept our love and support us
and to live happily ever after.”

“And you think being out of love is the solution to all these wants.”
“Yes. Because I hate wanting things.”
“Marry me.”
“You never listen to a thing I say. I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because of the wants!”
“That’s the difference between us.”
“What is?” “Your wants are my needs.”
Textbook Breakup
“We need to talk.”
“I fucking hate horoscopes. They lie every single fucking time.”
“Not to me they don’t.”
“Sure. You were saying something.”
“We need to break up.”
“I agree.”
“Huh?”

“I fell in love with you before you were the boy who sang about my
problems in your songs, and before you tried to evolve me into your version
of a better me and before I saw how you treated your neighbour’s dog and
before I knew how much you believed in horoscopes.”

“What’s wrong with horoscopes?”

“Nothing, except for the fact that you never really thought of it as a novel
idea that you share the same day as one twelfth of the world.” “Well you
aren’t-”

“I’m not so perfect myself, I know. You loved me better before you read my
poetry and understood how damaged I was and knowing about my temper
tantrums and wished I wasn’t so intensely passionate about my pipe
dreams.”

“Everything is always so logically put with you.”

“What do you expect? I gave you my heart a year and a half ago and you’ve
had them both beating in your chest. Now you’re going to give it back, all
broken and I’m going to break with it.”

“This is it, then.”

“It’s been a long time coming.”
“You knew already?”
“Oh baby. I knew it was broken the minute I began to look at horoscopes to
tell me how we were make it through the day.”
Constructive Criticism
“Tell me what you think.”
“Of the poem?”
“No, of my face. Yes, the poem.”
“I was going to say, because your face is just ugly.”
“Very funny. Read.”
“…”
“What did you think?”
“Why did you write this?”
“I wrote it for you.”
“For me?”
“Yes.”
“You make me self conscious when you say things like that.” “I know.”
“I’m not worth this you know. It’s too beautiful to be about me.”
“What does that mean?”
“I am half a girl. I deserve half a poem.”
“That isn’t true. You still haven’t told me what you really thought about it.”

“It’s as broken and complex and half hearted as a sad song about the way
you feel ink trail between your fingers like it’s blood. There is no reason for
it, it’s the kind of beautiful that is there just for being there. It happened, it’s
a moment in time forever frozen and to be remembered in a way that
candles that burn in holy places should be. It’s a forever, all by itself- Why
are you looking at me like that?”

“Because you believe you deserve half a poem.”

“I do. I am too damaged and broken and unhinged to deserve a full one-
stop shaking your head!”
“You are damaged and broken and unhinged. But so are shooting stars and
comets.”
Starving
“What’s your greatest wish?”
“Mine? Really?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Just curious, I guess.”
“It isn’t exactly a weather question is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not small talk.”
“Are you always this difficult to talk to?”
“Are you always this interogative?”
“Yes.”
“...” “Answer the question.”
“You’re going to hate the answer.”
“Let me decide that.”
“...”
“Well?”

“I am so hungry for someone to love me for being the library haunting,

candle lighting, Wordsworth loving, paper burning, mirror hating idiot that I
am.”

“That’s your greatest wish?” “It’s too much isn’t it?”

After Words
“I wish you would give it back to me.”
“Why? You’ll just break it again.”
“It’s my damned heart.”
“Yeah? Well, you take terrible care of things that are yours.”
“Fine. Keep it. I am equal parts concrete and soul anyway.”
“You say that, but I’m not entirely sure that you are. I think you’re deep,
and fragile and broken, and that makes you beautiful.”
“Again, concrete and soul. ”
“I wish you wouldn’t make this so hard.”

“So hard? I’m making this easy. You gave me dreams of half feathered
swans and a stupid house on an endless beach and a city made of an ocean,
and now you’re taking it away. But at least I had them for a while.”

“Don’t…be that way.” “I am going to be awake every single night and wish
for a shooting star, so I can wish upon that shooting star to wish thoughts of
you away.”

“I wish this could be easier on you. You gave me so much and so many
too.”
“So much of love and so many wishes?”
“No, so much wishing and so many loves.”
“Please give it back to me.”
“I have to keep a piece of you, don’t you understand? I do not want to
forget you.”
“But it’s my god damned heart.”
“If you liked it so much you wouldn’t have given it to me in the first place.”
“Fuck you.”
Cinnamon Souls
“You’re mixing water in your coke again.”
“I know.”
“You do that when you worry.”
“I’m always worried.”
“No, you’re usually cinnamon-in-your-tea worried. This is water-incoke
worried and that is seriously beginning to freak me out.”
“I know.”
“...”
“What?”
“What are you worried about?”
“You’re going to think it’s stupid.”
“Try me.”
“Well...do you ever wonder about the kind of guy you’re waiting for?” “I
think we all wonder about that guy, love.”
“I’ve been thinking about him more often than not lately. What he would be
like, I mean.”
“Oh. Well...if it helps any, I know what mine would be like.”
“Really?”

“Sure. He will be tall, so I have to stand on my toes to kiss him. He will be

kind so I can tell him anything without fearing him judging me. He will be
strong so he can carry me when I fall.”

“Wow. Sounds like you have this figured out. I guess we all have some idea
about what our soulmate should be like.”
“You know what yours will be like then?”
“Who, me?”
“No, I’m talking to the little green man standing behind you.”
“What?! Shit! He’s back!”
“Very funny.”
“I am, thanks.”
“So you know what your soulmate will be like?”
“Sure.”
“And?”
“He’ll love me like he has never ever known what its like to be in mind
stiring, bone crushing, soul shaking, heart breaking, completely fractured
love ever before. Oh, and he should like cinnamon.” “...” “In the mean time,
I’m putting more cinnamon in my tea.”
Austenesque
“Hello.”
“Good afternoon. Why have you come to see me today?”
“Because I had to.”
“Tell me what’s bothering you.”
“I lose my breath because I can’t believe this is all I am going to be.”
“What is wrong with what you are?”
“I’m not loved.”
“You have your friends, your family-”

“Come on, you know what I mean. The devil may care what the world
thinks, passionate, can’t breathe without each other, catch you when you
fall kind of love.”

“Ah.”
“I don’t even know how to begin to find it in this world.” “What do you
mean?”
“I mean I prefer living in my books. I like how that makes me feel. And
then I’m just disappointed.”
“And how does that make you feel?”

“It makes me feel sometimes, like I am completely unreasonable to say, that

in a time of smart phones , where apple isn’t a fruit, and where internet
pornography is what tides us over till the next relationship comes along…I
am looking for the kind of love Austen wrote of.”

“I disagree.”
“Why?”
“Because I have a feeling you are the last reasonable person left on this
planet.”
Fifteen on Humanity
Obsession
It takes fourteen minutes and twelve seconds to walk to your home from
mine every day. Your mother never fails to smile at me when she opens the
door. I never fail to notice that it doesn’t reach her eyes anymore.

You leave your door open an exact two point three centimeters. I don’t
think you do it on purpose. There is something wrong with the wood that
has left it that way. I pause one foot outside the door and listen to you
cough, trying to determine how sick you feel today. I hate that every time I
think you are particularly ill, I am always right.

Six months, seventeen days and fourteen hours . That is how long its
been since the doctors told us you had an illness. I sat there with your
parents, listening to a man who said words like ‘terminal’ and ‘leukemia’,
and counted the number of times he said ‘patient’ as if it were your name
(Seventeen).

The blood bank says one unit is four hundred and fifty milliliters and I
watch as they put the needle into my arm to pump out the blood into a little
plastic bag. It takes exactly five minutes twenty one seconds, because I’m
holding my arm so tight. If I could give you all my blood so you could feel
better for just a day, I would.

It has been seven days, twelve hours and fourteen minutes since the
ambulance came for you. Six days, fifteen hours and seven minutes since
the doctors told us they couldn’t help you anymore. I am counting the drips
of the glucose as it goes into your arm, my body wrapped around yours,
trying to pretend this is a bad dream.

You say noisily, a laugh escaping your parched mouth, that I am obsessed
with numbers. I want to tell you you’re wrong. My obsession is you. I say
nothing. This is the first time you have laughed in one month, three weeks
and two days.

Did you know that when someone dies their body weight drops quite
suddenly? It is not really noticeable unless you have held them close whilst
they are dying, praying to every god that you won’t lose them. It is just a
touch. But it’s there when they leave you.

Twenty one grams. That is the weight of a human soul.

Second Language English
I took your adjectives for granted. There was something about the way you
skipped over your ‘s’es and gleaned over your ‘i’s and ‘e’s that never really
made me want to kiss you. You’d sit there with your languid fingers
clutching a book that was half finished and read me words that were
completely mispronounced. It would prickle me under my skin and I would
grit my teeth, wondering when you would stop. I would never understand
the english language you thought you spoke and your confidence in your
own words annoyed me.

It was comical when you spoke in front of our friends. Your mistaken
pronunciation of the word ‘pronunciation’ in particular made them giggle. I
would stand in a corner, clutching a glass of rum and coke and cringe,
flushing in second hand embarrassment. You would smile at me from across
the room, and continue with your tangled tongue as though nothing was
wrong.

I felt sorry for you. But not sorry enough when you took your favourite
writing pen from my desk, your dog eared thesaurus and left my apartment
for the last time. I would lie if I said I wasn’t relieved for the respite from
mistaken english and broken words.

It took them screaming at each other next door, the rejection letter arriving,
my finger joints beginning to ache for me to realise; I missed your easy
enunciation of the word ‘beautiful’, the cresendo in ‘adoration’ and yes,
even the fluidity in ‘talented’. You pronounced phonetically to brain code a
language that was not first nature to you. The way your fingers curved at
the typewriter now made me misunderstand my own at the keyboard of a
computer.

I called you today, and you told me she is an English Major, and she loves
you most when you argue with your vowels.
I was right, you did speak a language I wasn’t wise enough to understand.
Bloodline
We liked to drive to the border and park the truck so we were in both places
at once, just to show each other how different the places we came from
were.

You would always say that our blood lines lay in the history of how we
learned to love. I would disagree that just because we made each other
bleed once in a while didn’t mean we actually loved each other. And you
would kiss me and taste like gold.

When they told me you were dying, I drove down alone in your truck,
leaving you alone in the driveway because I couldn’t believe that this was
the way you were going to let me go. I parked the truck and tried to tell
myself about bloodlines and how they worked and love and differences and
family and childhood.

I failed. You lied. Bloodlines didn’t lie in the history of how we learned to
love.
Love lay in bloodlines that had history enough to love each other.
(I stole you and scattered you on the border because even if you taste like
ash now, this is where you would want to be.)
This is Not a Story about Suicide
I am not here. These are not hospital walls. This is not a nurse who is
speaking to me. That is not John unconscious, lying in a bed that faces due
North, and that is not his mother trying to explain why his bed should
always face North.

This is not happening.

I am not taking a deep breath. I am not walking down the sickly white
corridors with their bleach scent. I am not buying this cup of coffee from a
cafeteria lady who is working at an hour that is reserved only for intensive
care patients. This is not the way back to what is not John’s room.

That is not his heart rate dropping, and I am not running out of the room,
screaming for help. We are not being pushed out, that door does not have a
red light that claims intensive care, it has not been all night.

That is not John’s doctor explaining how they were not able to pump his
stomach completely and it is not John who flat lined. That is not an empty
hospital bed. That is not his mother in shock and these, these are definitely
not my tears.

* This is not a funeral. And if it is a funeral, it is not John’s. Because it just

can’t be. I met him last week and he was fine.

We were fine.
*
“Name an unusual fact about the stomach.” He has asked me on one of our
study dates.
“The stomach has acids strong enough to dissolve zinc.” I answered. So he
ate lead instead.
Capillaries
The distance between Dublin and Boston is approximately 3000 miles. You
told me this when you were staring south west with the kind of madness I
have only seen in sailor’s eyes when they lived in lighthouses too small for
their giant ship dreams. It should have worried me, that glint in your eyes. I
just dismissed it as one of your navigational tantrums.

When we went to the pub later that evening, you told me I should have the
fish and chips, but the way you like it, with more vinegar and no tartar
sauce. I said that made it too salty, and you told me that was how real
sailors ate their fish. My reactions always were slow to your behavior. I
believe the expression ‘at sea’ was applied more often than not when you
spoke.

I never thought that the walks you mentioned on the beach when we were
children had any more to the idea than the romance of it all. So when you
told me you belonged to the sea, I thought you were talking about your
soul.

It never truly meant anything to me until I saw the letter with my name
where your boat had been at the dock. I wish you knew that I swam after
your lost trail long after you had gone, until she, like the jealous lover she
was, forced me to lose my breath somewhere in the freezing depths of the
water.
I have never quite regained it.

The distance between Dublin and Boston is 2991.42 miles, exactly. My now
shallow lungs contain 300,000 million capillaries. If I laid them end to end,
they would stretch 1500 miles.

I would do it, if I knew that you would lay yours out too…and meet me
halfway.
Insomnia
I am only an insomniac when it rains. The pitter patter of the raindrops
reminds me of the pitter patter of cat paws.
(He liked to cuddle at my feet when I could barely think, just to make me
feel better. I think you used to tell him to.)

I wish I could wrap your memories around my spine and wear them as a
backbone, because they are stronger than the arch my broken spined back
seems to have developed of late.

(Spines are oddly brittle, and a lot like wrists. Easy to break and forever to
heal.)

But I cannot depend of any of that anymore. So I wear red lipstick and high
heels and go to parties and tell strangers how amazing they are to be
wearing red lipstick and high heels and how different they must be to come
to this party instead of the other one.

(All because you would hate parties and think nightlife is so stupid.)

It is what I do with my insomnia. Because my spineless back, the memories

of you incessantly looped in my sleeplessly addled brain and the raindrops
remind me how I am not like you. How I am not brave and how I hate
parties but go to be closer to the version of you my memories are still
looping. When I come home, I kick off my high heels and smear my red
lipstick across my face.

(And all that is left is a catless, thin skinned, broken spined girl, trying to
learn how to be brave.)
Repopulation
When they will look back at his life, they will tell you that it was the
moment he won his first medal at the interschool swim meet of 1999. He
was fourteen, a freshman, new on the team and the underdog, for all intents
and purposes. They talked about it in the local papers as one of the greatest
achievements a fourteen year old had managed in the county.

But the truth was, like all men with overindulgent mothers, he was told that
he was different, that he was special. So when he grew up with the idea that
he was God’s gift to women, no one should have been surprised, but they
were, regardless.

After all, his mother had raised him alone, surely he had learned respect for
women from there.

His bedroom in his luxurious New York apartment, given to him by the firm
where he was a trusted, well known and received attorney, was like a beach,
with blonde, brunette and auburn haired beauties that all left, in tears.

He had read somewhere that the world would one day come to an end and
that if it did have to be repopulated, one man with incredibly fast acting
sperm (dubbed by scientists as superman sperm) would be able to do it in
the span of six months.
Which is why he was so careful with contraceptives. There was no doubt in
his mind that his sperm was that kind, and any kind of accident at this point
would not do.

It wasn’t until the November of the year 2021, three years post the War that
Ended It All, where the ration of women to men was 1000 to 1, that he
decided to actually use his gift for the benefit of man kind, signing himself
up for the experiments the scientists were offering so as to artificially
inseminate and help repopulate the earth. He had even smiled at the
extremely attractive nurse and told her that his soldiers would do enough
work for the whole world, as he had read somewhere.
Yes, one man certainly could repopulate the entire planet in only six
months, if every single one of his 10 million sperm cells is successful, every
single day.

Our man believed that he was that kind of man.

Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for the rest of female kind, it turned
out that speed and swimming had been his forte only in his youth.
Bones
“There are good days and there are bad days,” you would say to me as you
would try and explain away why the whiskey bottle was empty again this
morning, why you smelled like her and why you thought it was best to let
me know what you had done. At least that way, you were absolved of the
gift of lying; the one your bones were too light to lift and just couldn’t take,
by bestowing me with betrayal.

My mother would bring me an encouraging cup of tea in a giant pink mug

instead of a cup and explain, “There are good days and there are bad days.”
Her eyes were always full of positive energy and strength and good will. I
look back to those days and try and gain the strength she had in her bones
from her words. I always fail.

They told me I had a disease within my bones. It started from the bottom of
my knee and was moving upwards. Because that is what bones did. They
broke from the inside out. “There will be good days and bad days,” they
warned me and I know at that point that it was going to eat my bones and
spit them out once the muscle and strength from them had melted.

There have been good days and bad days, I tell myself as I hold your hand
waiting for the last of the treatments that may save the structure that is
holding me together before it falls apart completely. You ask me if I would
like some water. I say yes, a glass, if it would help my bones grow back. It
worked for plants. It may work for me, too.

You look at me, puzzled for a few seconds before asking if I am all right.
“Today is a bad day.” I say quietly, “I can feel it in my bones.”
Fragments
I call them fragments, the parts of me that were too exhausted to stay. He
calls them flecks because I am a flake. I wish I was a flake. It sounds
prettier than being a fragment. Flakes are like snow. Soothing, falling from
the sky on the tip of his tongue that melt and disappear. Fragments are
archeological findings of a scarred past we really should not remember. I
want to remember my scars. So I am a fragment.

I draw on my legs. When my skin dries out, I use my index finger as a

pencil and draw what the clouds are trying to tell me. Sometimes it’s a dog,
and sometimes it’s a bear and sometimes it is his face looking at me
disapprovingly.

That is when I stop drawing.

-

At night, when the rain falls, I sit at the bay window and pretend to write
stories whilst he pretends to sleep. “What are you writing?” he will ask in
his asleep voice. “A funny story.” It is not. It is a pale, scary story, and it
looks like my skin. “Were you dreaming?” I will ask him and he will
always nod and say, “Yes, a good dream.” No, it is not. I have seen how his
skin tenses and sweats in the moonlight when he sleeps.

I worry when I read scientific facts, so he hides the newspapers from me

when he is done. I always find them and spread them out on the table till
every inch of it is covered. They say that the average human sheds eighteen
kilograms of skin throughout their lifespan. I am not sure about how I feel
about the fragments dropping in trains and cars and planes and traveling to
places I shall never go.

-
“Do you think you’ll ever go to Japan?”
“Doubt it. I shall never have the money.”
“I bet parts of you have already got there.”
“You and your fragments.”
“Me and my fragments. We’re both so uncomfortable.”
“My fragments and I. And it’s not you, or them that are uncomfortable.”
“What, then.” “It is just the skin you are in.”
I Bet You Got This On Tape
This is not a story about you.

This isn’t the story of how I stayed up all night simply because I learned
that we grew 8mm in our sleep, and that terrified me. It isn’t the story of
how I counted your eyelashes and wished I could multiply their length in a
million, and ask you to love me that much. It isn’t the story of the sob I
broke just so I could split it in half and hand you the better part of me that
could handle tears.

This isn’t the story of how you chose to sleep whenever I was awake, and
enjoy my terror with the chuckle of the poppy down an addict’s nose. It
isn’t the story of my half toned veins were darkened by your uneven sense
of breathing ink onto them, and its not the one about how you chose to
shadow in my tears with your paintbrush because you loved the way they
dripped onto the floor.

This isn’t the story of how we fell in the wrong kind of love where the
darkness seemed to be better than the light, and secret ideas became the
basis of strength. This isn’t about a musician and a writer and how they saw
the stars as a trail across a galaxy. This isn’t any of that.

But more importantly than any of that, this is definitely not a story about
you.
Because this is the story of how perfect it is to watch a glasshouse fall, over
and over again.
Her Nails
Did you know that each finger nail and toe nail takes six months to grow
from root to tip?
Neither did I. And to be honest, I didn’t care.
I used to bite my nails.

I started chewing a long time ago, perhaps from an event that terrified me,
perhaps from nerves, I don’t remember anymore. But somehow, biting them
made me feel better. Chewing keratin off gave me a sense of winning
something, when honestly I had not won something in years. I felt like if
nothing else, the auto-cannibalism was the one thing I could control in my
life.

The thing with addiction is, when you see someone else who is inflicted,
you know instantly. What they do not understand is, we are kind of like
warriors. The white towers are places where something we need is captured
and like knights saving a princess at no matter what cost, those towers give
way to allow us passage. It is a never ending game we play with ourselves
trying to tell ourselves that one day we will win and that we will find the
treasure we are hunting for, be it princess or gold.

I saw her the first time when I happened to gaze outside my bedroom
window. She looked like something out of a fairytale…at least from the
back of her head. She did not turn even once and I could not see her face,
just her luxurious auburn hair that fell to her waist. What I did recognize
were her hands. Those were the hands of one like me. They shook mildly
and she would bring them to her face for moments at a time…when they
returned by her sides, I would notice the sparkle of saliva for a second
before it dried. She was not nearly as bad as me, her fingernails still
retained a shape. Mine were barely there, and it somehow made me feel the
wiser, stronger one of the two of us.

That, however, did not last for long. Over the days I would see the back of
her head, I would sometimes notice blood dripping from her fingertips,
revealing to me that she was getting closer and closer to her goal. She was
braver than me. I did not have the courage to wage war against the pink
towers yet. She did.

It didn’t really hit me until I noticed bandages on each of her ten fingernails
and the way she had to hold something whilst standing up just how brave
she was compared to me. They were gone. Each of her fingernails were
gone. I stared at the back of her head and wondered, had she ripped them
out? Surely not…that would be cheating. And warriors don’t cheat. I
narrowed my eyes and stared at my own nails. Surely she should be happier
now that she had reached her destination.

But she just boarded the bus as she always did, and left.
The next day, she stopped coming to the bus stop. That was the day I
stopped biting my nails.
Six
August brings sounds of emptiness...
-

We parted in July. I loved you too much. I had not thought that would
become too much for you to handle. And that we would part on a
technicality. It was a stormy eve. And the lightening broke us apart, so
easily it almost made you glad. I know. The storm outside matched the
storm in your voice.

I’ll always be surprised at what can happen when two people begin to hate
each other.
-

We fought in June. When your work was getting you down and your parents
were putting pressure on you and your world seemed to be falling apart. I
wanted to help you. I tried. You told me to leave you alone.

I did.
- We talked for hours in May.

And you told me about your life, about the broken dreams and the
mesmerizing aspirations that you once had. And I told you about my
responsibilities and my hopes. We understood each other.

We thought we would have an eternity to discuss other things. Like a future

and the distance and the friends who thought you were not good enough and
that I was too much of a dreamer.

-
We kissed in April.

Your lips tasted of the sea. The sea is a part of my childhood. A childhood
where I sailed, and swam with dolphins, and danced with old sailors with
wooden legs. A childhood where my grandmother made me fresh cream
with garden picked strawberries to eat at the beach. A childhood where my
mother and I would run along the beach till we got soaked in the waves and
my father wouldn’t stop laughing at us.

You tasted of my childhood.

-

We met in March. Three days post him. Remember that March is important
to me. It was the month in which I forgot two and a half years of pain, to be
with you. The sun shone that day after ten days of grey cloudy skies that
threatened of storm. But it was March, so the storm evaded us completely.

It would come back. It always does.

Trust
The problem with trust is, that when it breaks, your heart breaks with it.
You find yourself standing alone in the dark where once you had someone
whose hand you could hold. You find yourself broken where you were once
strong. We feel like we’re brilliant when we are in love... but in trust we are
safe. Or are we really? Can we ever really be?

[The eyes receive approximately 90 percent of all our information, making

us basically visual creatures.]

The problem with trust is, when it is betrayed, we get damaged. And more
damaged than I have ever been before. My heart feels like it’s been laid on
ice, and once it has worn away, the numbness will disappear and all that
will remain is the bruised, cracked fracture that spins around it and over
again.

[The romantics call eyes the windows to your soul. Mine saw nothingness in
yours.]
The problem with trust is, I have short term memory loss. And tomorrow, I
shall break and fracture and crack myself all over again. [Lipstick marks
can sometimes be stronger than eyes or bones.]
Spineless
My mother always told me I was born with four spines. They stay there,
side by side, in my ramrod straight back, the reason for my very correct
posture. So when my back began to arch, people noticed.

My parents were first. You look different, they would suppose as I would
approach every morning for breakfast. Is something wrong? My mother
would question. Are you ill? My father would ask.

I had a gift with the vague and I used it to my only advantage in this
scenario. Because telling them the truth would be a lot more devastating.
How would I tell them about the fact that my bones, my spine, the very part
of me they admired most, was depreciating?

I suppose the trouble with most relationships is to trust someone, knowing

that you would willingly lie to them, just to protect them from getting hurt.
We all do it, and those of us who claim we don’t, only lie because their lies
are smaller. I lied to protect them from what had happened to my bones.
Not just my spine. All my bones.

The thing with bones are, they are on the inside of you and they grow in
whatever direction they want. You do not have a say on it. Just like I didn’t
have a say when I fell in love with you. You began to grow inside, quite like
another, more twisted, less straight spine. You were a sharp, painful object,
made of something stronger than granite. All four of my spines were put to
work dealing with you and they still weren’t enough. I took each one for
granted, till there were none left. And when I had nothing left to break, you
decided you needed something that wasn’t broken to start all over again.
Human bone is stronger than granite, my father had read out to me at the
dining table.

A block of bone the size of a matchbox can support nine tonnes-that is four
times as much as concrete can support. He smiles as he tells me these facts,
in a way that breaks my heart.
I can only imagine how difficult it was for you to crush the entire skeleton
that was me.
Growth
There is delectability to the imperfection of human ritual she had long since
forgotten. It came from the incapability of understanding social situations
because they made her nervous.

Her doctors had insisted that it was post traumatic stress disorder that she
had suffered from almost drowning as a child. It came with its nuances, like
headaches, and shaking hands. None of them really bothered her. None
except for the fact that she bit her nails. She had spent a majority of her life
biting them, particularly when other people were around. She figured, if her
mouth was busy, then she wouldn’t have to spend her time talking. Words
would stumble out of her mouth on occasion and even to her, they sounded
alien.

The tattooed boy met her on a day when she had almost had a nervous
breakdown and he had nails that were much longer than hers. She had read
somewhere that it took nails six months to grow from base to tip. Maybe if
she used those difficult alien objects called words, he would actually talk to
her. So she stopped biting.

For a while, things were good. She noticed that she had not finished the last
two books she had bought, that her mother left a few corners of the bed
unmade on purpose sometimes and that her father always lost a pen a
fortnight. Ritual in the unmade, just like her nails had been to her.
And then she began to notice other things. The tattooed boy whom she had
come to love (if constantly thinking of someone long enough not to breathe
was love) had his own little rituals. Like noticing what hurt her most and
repeating it to see her in pain. And deliberately leaving the lipstick the
others left on his collar to watch her reaction to it. She found that ripping
out her nails made it easier for her to justify his actions. Each nail gave her
a few more minutes of throbbing, painful release.

It was only when she ripped the last one out did she realize that each finger
and toenail takes six months to grow from base to tip. And this time, when
she finally grew her nails to their tip, she noticed her own little imperfect
human ritual. She measured the amount she loved herself by how long her
nails are.