Pygmalion

Pygmalion off'ring, first approach'd the shrine,
And then with pray'rs implor'd the Pow'rs divine:
Almighty Gods, if all we mortals want,
If all we can require, be yours to grant;
Make this fair statue mine, he wou'd have said,
But chang'd his words for shame; and only pray'd,
Give me the likeness of my iv'ry maid.

-- translated from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book X

--

There is a song of yours. I listen to it at least once every day, whether in the stillness when the dawn has barely breathed its first breath or late in the night as the murmuring darkness tucks the covers over me. I listen to that voice of yours wash over me like holy water, the words rolling off your tongue like a trickling waterfall of the finest wine.

I think that’s how I first fell in love with you. The first time I heard this song, I thought your voice was the only thing on this Earth that could nurse a broken heart back to life.

--

Back then, I'd always laughed when my classmates complained about being sent to their room. My room was my haven, my four-walled bubble, impervious to the sound of broken glass, of slammed doors, of venomous cursing, or worse -- of fuming silence. I'd lie there on my daisy-dotted bedspread, pretending not to hear the warring voices downstairs as each barbed accusation rang in my ears like the bellows of a gong announcing the arrival of imminent doom. I'd used to worry if this time would finally be the last -- the beaming faces in those family pictures would become a relic, an endless slideshow of fragmented memories flashing past like a ghastly carousel, until the years would pass by and all that's left would be the sliver of a Cheshire smile.

But that night, all I could think of was how much happier everyone would have been if they had never married -- even at the expense of my existence.

I should have never been born.

I hated the noise, but I hated silence even more. Silence was an inhaled breath, a point of no return. Silence was two strangers in the same house, a fleeting glance over the morning newspaper with no flicker of emotion or recognition, two lives intersecting at one precise moment only to diverge infinitely evermore. I needed something -- anything -- to block out the screams and swallow the silence whole.

That night when your song came on the radio and I heard you for the first time, the static of the airwaves buzzed like insects hovering over a dying animal that had drawn its final breath. The sounds of destruction had crept in from under the door, rattling the pictures on the wall, but all I could hear in that moment was the sound of your voice, kissing my tangled crown of hair and bandaging my festering wounds with lyrical lines and melodic motifs that seemed as if they had been written for me and me alone.

--

I kept a picture of you in both of my rooms. The one where you cradle the guitar in your arms -- I'd glance up at you as I'd throw myself across the bed after spending twenty minutes walking home from school each day. On the weekends, you'd be there waiting for me with your tousled hair and teasing grin on that magazine cover I'd stolen from the dentist's magazine racks. My life was now defined in terms of two's but the sight of you on my bedroom wall almost made it feel like one again.

I'd greet you each morning with a smile, confiding in you my hopes and dreams for the day. At night, I'd whisper to you my confessions and my greatest fears. You knew all my secrets. I'd lie there under the covers in the night, glancing at the face illuminated by moonlight as you sang to me from my bedside stereo. I listened to all of your songs, but it was that one -- your voice so deep I felt myself drowning in you every time -- that always reverberated in my head right before I'd close my eyes and surrender to sleep.

--

"Why won't you go out with me?"

He had a mouth that reminded me of an overstretched rubber band, drooping at the corners while the rest seemed to hang limply around his teeth. His voice was low and husky like yours, except he spoke in a grating mumble that would have been incapable of articulating a string of lyrics in one swooning legato. I shook my head and pressed my sweating palms against the fabric of my skirt, afraid to look up at the faces staring down in taunting derision.

"C'mon, why don't you answer me? You think you're too good for me, is that it? I'm not good enough for you, huh?"

Someone else laughed. "Of course you're not. Don't you know? She's obsessed with that singer -- the one who came out with that big hit almost four years ago. Remember it?"

"Oh!" Another voice exclaimed loudly, "The one that was on the radio all the time, and they used it in all those commercials -- God, that was ages ago! What the hell happened to him?"

"Shut up, you fish heads." He knelt down beside the bench where I sat, leering like a predator licking its lips at its cowering prey. "I've heard some funny things about you, Evie. They say ever since your parents divorced, you haven't been the same. You don't let anyone touch you." I froze as I felt his hand creep onto my thigh.

"Such a shame, isn't it?" I shut my eyes but the low, guttural voice wouldn't go away. He must have felt my fear bristling underneath the fabric of the skirt, for he grew bolder and I felt the incriminating trail of fingerprints ascend. "A girl like you, running away from all guys as if they were dogs."

I shuddered as he leaned into me. "It'd make sense if you were a lesbian," he murmured. "But that's not right, is it? 'Cause you fucking worship that guy. Lilian went to your mom's house for a project last year -- she said your wall was covered with his pictures, and the only thing you ever played on your stereo were his songs."

My eyes snapped open; I tried to stand but he laughed and held me down like a lead anchor. "It's true, isn't it? Tell me, do you pray to him every night before you go to bed? Is that his picture in your locket? Do you wear him around your neck like a fucking cross?" A chorus of laughter erupted before me, but the only thing I could hear was the roar of my own silence.

--

They were dogs, all of them. Ravenous, fanged, slobbering creatures ravaging for a piece of meat.

Except him.

They were right, weren't they? I was sick in my delusions. I'd never see you standing before my eyes, hear you say my name as if it were the most beautiful word in the English language. I'd never be able to touch you with my bare hands, prove to myself that you were more than a mirage in this lifeless desert.

But I could see him standing across the quad, his face grinning when he'd managed to catch my eye. I could hear him call out my name like a declaration, a love letter encompassed in two syllables. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest when he pulled me against him, the lurching of my stomach when he swept the hair out of my face with a casual brush of the fingertips, the electric jolt shooting through my body when he pressed his lips against mine.

I'd fallen so many times in the past and you were always there to lift me up again. But this time, I didn't reach out to take your hand.

--

It hurts so much.

I'm so sorry. I was stupid. I'd clouded my head with swollen, ripened illusions of love and fulfillment, but as soon as I'd gotten close, the mirage vanished before my eyes. He left me in the middle of that wasteland, sucked dry to the point that not even vultures would have anything to scavenge from my bleached-white bones. I have nothing... no, I am nothing. I can't eat, I can't sleep, I haven't stepped outside my room in nearly a week.

Is this my penance? My punishment?

Your songs have been on replay, blurring the days into one unending soundtrack. Your morphine voice is the only antidote to my excruciating pain.

Forgive me. I won't ever lose sight of you again.

I'm sorry.

--

For the longest time, I doubted its existence.

What is love? I can't see it. I see manufactured sweets wrapped in pink tin foil, mass-produced paper cards in red and white hues, bouquets of flowers grown and raised by strangers those fawning lovers never met. I can't feel it. I feel the static in the air, the unspoken tension between two people who once promised to love one another until death do them part. He told me he could show me what it was. In a way, he did. He humiliated me, bruised me, stripped me of everything until I was left with nothing.

But that's not true. Because he couldn't take you away.

In the stillness of the night, your voice is the lullaby that cradles the newborn stars. You've never left me, even in those moments when I turned my back on you. When I woke up that morning to find my life had split into two; when I dreaded going to school because I knew they were waiting for me with their unrelenting jeers; when he used me, then tossed me aside without a second glance; when I was stressed about exams; when I was tired; when I was lonely -- in my highs and in my lows, you've never abandoned me.

I'm not afraid anymore.

It exists. All I have to do is close my eyes and listen.

I can hear it. The purest form of love.

--

It felt as if I was underwater. All the sounds were blended together the way my watercolors used to swirl round and round until you couldn't tell the paint apart from the water. Even the nurses in their white caps, the doctors with their bizarre instruments -- they seemed to form one monstrous ripple of color, darting in and out of sight.

The pain in my head wouldn't go away. It was as if the inside of my skull was plated in slate and a horrid little creature was dragging its claws against it, ten squealing talons of chalk. Before, the pain had at least been tolerable, but now all I wanted to do is crack my head open and rip the creature to shreds with my own two hands.

I remember crawling into the bathroom in the middle of the night. It was a Saturday night -- I was at my father's house. I couldn't sleep -- my head was throbbing, I was nauseated to the point that the flickering of the bathroom lights made me sick. I'd barely made it to the toilet when everything poured out my mouth. I must have fainted then, because the next thing I knew, people I had never met were bending over me, asking me all these questions I couldn't comprehend, when all I wanted was somebody to turn off those damn red and blue lights that wouldn't stop blinking in my face. I threw up again.

The only thing I can remember after that is the image of my mother and father standing beside my bed. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen them standing in the same room together like that, his arm around her like a life ring, her eyes clouded with tears she'd once been too proud to show in front of him.

Am I going to die? The mistake that should never happened, retracted sixteen years too late?

--

I once hated silence. Silence was the beginning of the end, a question with no answer, a white room with no furnishings, extending on into infinity.

When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was the attending nurse, whose eyes widened in shock when she noticed I'd been staring wordlessly at her. I watched her frantic gestures as she beckoned somebody into the room. Moments later, the doctor came in, followed by my mother and father whose faces were flooded with a swirling mix of relief and exuberance. They crowded all around me, all their mouths opening and closing like gasping fish.

I could hear nothing.

They tell me, through written words and signed gestures, that I was lucky to have survived. They call me a fighter, a warrior, a miracle. At least you didn't end up like Helen Keller. At least you're still alive.

There is a song of yours. I used to listen to it at least once a day, whether in the stillness of the dawn as the world drew its first breath, or in the murmuring darkness as the world exhaled in a calming sigh. I can't hear your voice anymore. I used to wonder if in exchange for my life, I had no choice but to let you go.

I lie there on my daisy-dotted bedspread, imagining the chatter of the television downstairs as my parents are curled up together on the couch, watching the movie they'd rented together the night before. I look up at the picture of you on my wall, and when I close my eyes, I swear I can hear the sound of your voice, kissing my tangled crown of hair and unwinding the bandages that have held me together all these years, those lyrical lines and melodic motifs falling away, revealing bare, unblemished skin.

You're still here.

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A/N: Took me three days to write this, and still not at all happy with it. Last line feels like a cop-out. Will return to this sometime in the future.