When They Look Away, You Look At Me

I used to imagine that if you had reached out and just touched me while we were in front of everyone, we would have been transparent. They’d have seen everything inside of us, see the truth, and then we’d shatter like glass to the floor. Except you never did.

You were always so careful to only ever be nice to me when no one was looking. You’d call me a junkie as a joke for smoking when we’d all stand around outside Mcdonald’s after school, just to let everyone know you thought I was disgusting. But sat beside one another, under the table, you’d press your leg into mine. When you lit my joints you’d lean in so close and with such tender care it was almost as if you’d caressed my face so gently in the cold I could have mistaken it for a first snow’s breeze.

The winter I was seventeen I discovered how to travel through space and time. I suppose the correct term would be teleportation, it’s not as if we ever moved forward or backward in time, at least not that I ever noticed, but more so, I’m not entirely sure where we ever seemed to end up. It was like blacking out and coming to mid sentence, I would just carry on and pretend as if I was still fully aware of what was happening. I suppose I just wanted to seem cool in front of you, so letting on that I wasn’t sure what was happening and freaking out wasn’t the best way to win you over.

What was ironic about the experience, is later that year in the summer before I turned 18, I spiralled into a strong bout of agoraphobia. I not only didn’t leave the house, but was fearful to even imagine myself stepping foot beyond the boundaries of my own bedroom never mind travelling to unknown destinations. It’s funny how things turn out.

It started one night outside the McDonald’s my friends and I would hang out in every week. It was raining heavily and in the depths of winter, so unusually it was only the two of us who agreed to step outside to have a smoke. I’m not entirely sure I can remember how it happened. It seems like now in recollection we were standing under the awning away from the rain, I had the cigarette dangling out of my mouth, you leaned down to light it for me, our hands brushed against one another and all I remember is suddenly sitting under cherry trees, tying the stems into knots with our tongues. The grass underneath me was warm and dry and the sun was beaming down with such warmth. I was mid laugh when I’d come to, it turns out I had been telling you my hair was falling out, you continued laughing and through fumbling to tie the cherry knot with your tongue reached out to touch my hair and told me it smelled like strawberries, and you always liked the taste of them better.

The instances of blacking out continued slowly but steadily after that. Moments I would be walking home with you at my side and then a gust of wind pushed you into me only for us to next minute be searching for pearl coloured shells on a black beach, surrounded by thousands of glistening stars and the soft sounds of the ocean lapping. Being the last two to get off the bus and our hands touching on the same pole, a moment later laying on plastic lawns, metal birds and blinking lights overhead, fluorescent clouds and pink PVC furniture. I could feel you lying next to me.

We rarely both acknowledged this phenomenon. It had the sort of affect that whenever we awoke and had travelled we’d be mid sentence, thought or laughter, feeling nothing but joy and childlike giddiness. It was amazing, it struck me into a trance of awe whenever I recalled it. Not just one world we existed in, but multiple. What more could I have ever hoped for.

Despite the excursions we embarked on every other weeknight, I dreamt about you appearing outside my school gates to profess your love to me and ask me to run away with you, and only you, almost every day. It wasn’t enough for me to travel with you for moments at a time. I only ever seemed to awaken from the travel blackouts when we were interrupted by the presence of someone else. Which was almost always the case. I imagined scenarios of us being stuck forever in one of the golden fields, or glass oceans we ended up at, uncertain anyone would ever find us in the real world to be able to bring us back. But they did. Like I said, you only ever spoke to me or showed me affection, even decent politeness, whenever we weren’t around anyone else.The minute someone would come out,

“Hey can I borrow a lighter?”

“Oh yeah no bother, here you go”

reaching into your pocket you turn your back to me and talk to them. Like I was never there. Like I was an invisible speck floating in the rain. It stung at the time, but I never quite admitted to myself just how much. I felt insane, questioning the reality of our relationship. Why was it that you detested showing me affection around others so much? I was naive.

Sounds of the party were drifting out the open back door of the house, I could see the lights through the tree branches. Arms wrapped around myself I tried to make my winter jacket compensate for the dress I was wearing. Smoking in the dark at the end of the garden, everyone else walked away too stoned, we stayed to finish the last of the joint, you pass the roach and I’m slipping in and out between bamboo poles. Sunlight beaming down around me, I hear birds fluttering around behind the green walls, I know it’s my job to be the seeker in this maze. A smile stretches across my face as I hear you running and laughing. A blue sky perforates the leaf tops, casting beautiful mid day summer sun onto the bamboos. Ground beneath me deep brown, almost black, wood chips softly crunching into the soil as I tip toed around the corners of the maze. I’d never felt such pure joy.

I remember one night, you pretended to push me over when no one was looking but the minute your hands touched me we fell into a golden chasm, specks of orange light danced around us, the air hot and dusty but so beautiful. Silence filled the space the echo of our fall had created, and I was laying on top of you where I had landed. The space between us is only noise, count the seconds and I’ll be able to hear your thoughts. Each breath was a low drum, a beat that reverberated somewhere so deeply below us, a gasp - a thimble rattling high above the bass. Tst tst tst tst it fades away with each rise and fall of my chest. The beating of our hearts swelling, strings of the orchestra building up as I locked eyes with yours,

“Your eyes are yellow, you know. Always thought they were oceans made of dust, storms in the forest - storms in summer rain, sunflowers made of fields made of sunflowers, all sitting under your skull”.

You leaned in, kissed me like an arrow.

When our lips met the taste of strawberry chewing gum exploded across my tongue, rippling and pulsing through me like ecstasy. A hot metal flash my nose ring touches off your septum piercing as we press deeper into one another, and they ignite, casting sparks of neon blue lightning all around us.

It was never quite the same after that. At least not in my memory now. Through the travel blackouts, I would eventually learn the delicate art of fucking on a rooftop. Until one day I felt so sick I fell off and up up, floated up to space. Forgot my place fell right back down, three flights of stairs until I was standing over you screaming

“I can’t walk them, man! I smoke eight packs a day!”

Something in the pit of your stomach drops when you realise you’ve fallen in love with the wrong person.

“Everyone who needs to piss get off now. This is your last chance!”

The journeys began to change as time went on. The better our time in the places got, the worse you treated me in reality. Some days you wouldn’t even look in my direction. What was I doing wrong? It got to the point that other people began to become enthralled in these journeys, I don’t know who exactly they were, but all that became obvious to me was it was no longer just us two.

Stepping off the bus my foot sank into the pavement. The laughing and shouting and music nulled out the second I jumped down from the metal steps. We had pulled over onto this highway to pee. I see figures running from the bus illuminated in perforations from the blinking red tail lights of the bus. It’s hard to make them out, the outlines grow hazier and blur together with the blackness around the light. Blink red - I see the rain coming down so heavily it doesn’t look real in the reflection of the light - blink black void - I see nothing around me, only the concrete road, I can feel it I can sense the shapes in the dark, there’s nothing here, a vast expanse of asphalt, a flat plane, - blink red - the girls are laughing off in the distance I see you moving towards the back of the bus, moving around the rain drops falling in the spotlight - blink black - this road stretches out for miles in any direction, even though there’s more people here than there ever has been before I feel completely alone - blink red - you’re pissing in the periphery of the tail lights - black - the girls run around me laughing and hanging out of each other, I feel them moving in the dark as they brush past me - red -

“Are you not going to piss then?” - black -

“Huh?”

Drawn out of my daze, “Nah I’m good actually, I can’t pee in the rain”

I laugh it off, it’s unconvincing - red - You’re standing by the metal steps back to the bus, too stoned to notice my tone is off,

“Alright, suit yourself just don’t piss yourself next to me. Come on, what are you waiting for let’s go?”

Cold earth turned grey. Neon lights of the McDonalds no longer would cast your eyes in red and yellow when we stood outside. Eventually I even quit smoking. It’s like I forgot what it felt like to embrace. How you treated me in real life began to swell to a climax, and I was filled with so much pain, but where does it go! How can I hold all of this with no outlet, with no mouth to speak with no mind to unravel. How can I begin to feel at home in the world when I feel so restless, so invisible. I couldn’t express what was happening to anyone else, they’d never believe me. They’d never even believe that you liked me. I became completely isolated in my mind.

The journeys and blackouts carried on, they became less and less appealing, more strangers became involved and voices in the dark of people I’d never met, I didn’t care. We floated in the black ink together. We got lost in crowds of people, swaying like seaweed at the bottom of a lake. We sank into the ground staring at dead stars above us, the soil rising around our vision as we went six feet beneath the sky. I didn’t care to move. I didn’t care that you were going down with me. Until one day, warm hands touched mine and that’s all they did. Flesh pressed into flesh. It never made me black out again. Just cold skin on skin. The mechanics of blood and bone moving muscle and ligament to bring you towards me. There was no spark, no such thing as touch, caress, tender, there was no electricity. Particles touch particles but I know that’s not even true. It’s impossible for any one particle to ever truly touch another, if they come into contact they either bond to acquire a more stable state, or if they truly touch, they repeal one another.

A piano chord on a loop endlessly. I’m in love with a memory that was out of tune when it played but sounds so soft and sweet now timelessly, echoing in the corners of my mind. It reminds me that I once felt love and now I don’t. It’s sweeter than I remember. I still feel that pain, but the moments of joy and awe only grow rosier in my memory each time I run them over. It almost makes reliving what was to come even worse than it had been when I lived it.

I never quite figured out the reason why we began to teleport at the slightest touch, and even more I never quite figured out why you neglected me so much. Maybe living in the worlds we created was a detriment, nothing could ever come so close so why bother.

Still, I imagine in a memory we got married and ran away with each other. In a memory you appeared outside those school gates after all. Being with you in the places we created when we touched, watching the sun rise, no matter how hard I tried to will it to stop, for tomorrow to never come, it always did. It should be a comfort but in the end all it made me feel was indifference. That it doesn’t matter whether I want to have another day or not, it’ll go on with or without me. It’s gone on without me before and it’ll go on without me again. Snow will fall silently against the dawn. The sky will fall down around me, smothering like the blanket we lie under when one day we’ll sleep in a big bed together. And every night it will expand further and further, and our hands won’t touch, and our distance will grow. Until our ceiling looks as appealing as the nights sky. So we’ll stare at it intently and never each other, never glance, never look. Not ever. Because if we did, we wouldn’t see us, we’d see our expanse.