By Caitlin Young
I silently slipped away from this life when you entered it. But you have coaxed me to come back. So here I am, waking up in an early found bed. The start of semester sun streaming in the window. I find my phone, put on yesterday's sweat soaked socks and find you asleep downstairs on a couch. You were probably scared to leave me here on my own or maybe I'm thinking too highly of our relationship. I'll leave now. I won't wake you. I don't want another goodbye. Not because I don't want to mark your entrance and exit points to my life but because I think knowing that information is a bit absurd these days. You live with me constantly. You signed a studio lease in a hippocampic neighbourhood with no end date.
I'm walking out the door now, knowing it might lock behind me. Whatever I've left is now yours.
Our friendship does not usually consist of parties like this.
But you value me as good at these things. You think my
emotive nature plays nicely with bringing a bottle of wine
even when you know you'll be offered a line
if the right people come.
You explained this all to me,
I still fail to understand why it is a line
and you don't find it funny when I say other shapes it could
be.
You believe me to be part of that world, even if I just believe
I recognise the characters and once joined in. Memories of
this night will develop as substances wear off.
In a week you will be faced with a stark cubicle realisation of
why I left gracefully, stumbling down the stairs at 7am.
I've hit the mainstreet and I face the revelation no
one else has your face or mine, or our effects.
But you'll be sat with the memory. And also at the same
time, another memory will overlap with it. That memory
will be of us dancing to the perfect song, and everyone else is
busy and is not watching us dance like they used to.
At least people listen to my opinions now,
and at least I no longer strive to be these people.
Parts of me were challenged when I went away, sometimes
in nice and sweet ways like Christian girls at shared kitchen
tables telling me tales of a lord. Sometimes parts of me
dissolved away, they laid on my tongue sharp and sour.
But I always had the false-bottom-memory-montage of this
song
and how it played over our actions,
They are actions now,
Then they were clammy choices we did not want to make
and tried to pass onto the other.
But they were made
They hung in the air,
we watched the complications arise and just become
what had come to pass.
The sticky choice of closing the door becomes another action.
Once we made the choices they hung for the air, before latching onto us. They covered our hangover sea swims, the salt baptisms, nights that forgot to end and last four days.
Are you awake now? When will you know I am gone? Will you come and find me even after I spent the night unravelling the blanket on the bed? Am I coming to the next party?
The Jumble 