"I Looked Without Seeing, Like Someone Who Arrives at a Party From Which He Knows the Only Person Who Really Interests Him Will Be Absent"

What I've learned in the past few years is that I am no good at waiting.  I pretend to be. I distract myself with interesting jewels and objects to fascinate me. Sometimes in the form of paint, sometimes in the form of ink, usually in the form of images.  Those that make me salivate.  Sometimes, they are books.  Sometimes, they are people.  I learn leagues from all of them, and breathe in the scent of their pages and binding as deeply as I savor the taste of their skin- but I am waiting.

While I am waiting, I pretend that I am not. It is a feeble attempt to trick some superstition or dead relative my parents always told me would be watching me from above.  To outsmart them.

But I am waiting. And it is as satisfying as any self discipline can be.  Satisfying until the moment my throat opens, parched, sweat pours itself from measured skin, and nails reach out from my fingertips, finally, in unhidden want.

This torturous crumbling happens infrequently but
when it does
there is a pleasure in it's undoing that is quite
remarkable.

-k.





(title credit: A partial sentence from a story in When I Was Mortal by Javier Marías)
(photo credit: from blackmilk tumblr)