Nights Of My Youth
Nights Of My Youth
Some nights are excruciatingly lonely, your skin's memories tormenting you as you lie there in bed, remembering how she felt in your arms, her lips pressed against your neck, the two of you rhythmically conjoined until she pulled away and smiled at you. You can still feel her warmth even as you lie on the cold sheets, you can feel her arms around you even as you wrap yourself in ineffectual blankets, feeling her hair on your face as you bury your head in your pillow, willing yourself to sleep before you torment yourself any longer, longing for the blathering caress of a banal dream to take away the stark bare agony of her absence.
There are other nights when you cry yourself to sleep for no good reason, when all the things you've done wrong come back to sit on the edge of your bed and stroke your hair and face with their cold clammy fingers, whispering to you as you curl up trying to melt into yourself, hiding your head in your hands, your hands in your chest, your chest in your knees, and you want to sink into the mattress and disappear into its sweaty springs and infantile pattern of stitching, you want to soak into the fabric along with your tears as they make their slow pathetic progress over your nose and along the premature creases of your mouth. You slip into a sputtering sleep when you've spent all your tears, finally releasing your grip on the damp pillowcase and losing consciousness.
That is to say nothing of the nights of self hatred, bitter and black like the angsty teenage coffee that fuels it, sitting up in blind revulsion in the dark, afraid to let go and sleep, wound too tight by the caffeine and all the thoughts you were chasing away by daylight, thoughts you don't understand, and you're a writer, almost pathologically so, and these thoughts don't have words or rhyme or reason, no syntax to dissect, no metaphors to contemplate, so you sit there and stew, studying every crease in your soft pale hands with a new sense of loathing, every line another path you cannot walk, another thing you cannot be, and there they lie, spelled out in infuriating wordless clarity on the palms of your hands, in the curve of your breasts, written in languages you don't speak across your face, still young and somewhat innocent.
Paranoia nights are few, but they seem to linger long after dawn, clinging to your bleary eyes and messy greasy hair. Those are the nights you sit by the phone waiting for a fateful fatal call, word of some new disaster you don't understand, some new horror to rob you of your sleep, another cry for help you don't know how to give. Those are the nights you drink two pots of coffee and pace, or sit on the floor and draw patterns in the cracks, staring at the walls, finding a moment's peace in the little plaster mermaids and stucco worlds until another sound makes you rush for the phone, which has not rung, but very well could have, and when it does you are sure it will bring fresh misery to pour into your coffee pot so you keep your eyes open another night, another hour, sitting by the phone and waiting.
Some nights are excruciatingly lonely, your skin's memories tormenting you as you lie there in bed, remembering how she felt in your arms, her lips pressed against your neck, the two of you rhythmically conjoined until she pulled away and smiled at you. You can still feel her warmth even as you lie on the cold sheets, you can feel her arms around you even as you wrap yourself in ineffectual blankets, feeling her hair on your face as you bury your head in your pillow, willing yourself to sleep before you torment yourself any longer, longing for the blathering caress of a banal dream to take away the stark bare agony of her absence.
There are other nights when you cry yourself to sleep for no good reason, when all the things you've done wrong come back to sit on the edge of your bed and stroke your hair and face with their cold clammy fingers, whispering to you as you curl up trying to melt into yourself, hiding your head in your hands, your hands in your chest, your chest in your knees, and you want to sink into the mattress and disappear into its sweaty springs and infantile pattern of stitching, you want to soak into the fabric along with your tears as they make their slow pathetic progress over your nose and along the premature creases of your mouth. You slip into a sputtering sleep when you've spent all your tears, finally releasing your grip on the damp pillowcase and losing consciousness.
That is to say nothing of the nights of self hatred, bitter and black like the angsty teenage coffee that fuels it, sitting up in blind revulsion in the dark, afraid to let go and sleep, wound too tight by the caffeine and all the thoughts you were chasing away by daylight, thoughts you don't understand, and you're a writer, almost pathologically so, and these thoughts don't have words or rhyme or reason, no syntax to dissect, no metaphors to contemplate, so you sit there and stew, studying every crease in your soft pale hands with a new sense of loathing, every line another path you cannot walk, another thing you cannot be, and there they lie, spelled out in infuriating wordless clarity on the palms of your hands, in the curve of your breasts, written in languages you don't speak across your face, still young and somewhat innocent.
Paranoia nights are few, but they seem to linger long after dawn, clinging to your bleary eyes and messy greasy hair. Those are the nights you sit by the phone waiting for a fateful fatal call, word of some new disaster you don't understand, some new horror to rob you of your sleep, another cry for help you don't know how to give. Those are the nights you drink two pots of coffee and pace, or sit on the floor and draw patterns in the cracks, staring at the walls, finding a moment's peace in the little plaster mermaids and stucco worlds until another sound makes you rush for the phone, which has not rung, but very well could have, and when it does you are sure it will bring fresh misery to pour into your coffee pot so you keep your eyes open another night, another hour, sitting by the phone and waiting.
posted by Andrew at 9:57 PM
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