The Lovesong Writer

It is amazing how tired one can get by simply doing nothing for two hours. I sat in that dull geometry room reading posters of lines and angles, listening to the sniffling of stuffy noses. S sat next to me as usual; it was the same thing last year. I wonder if S and I look related at all. Our names are so similar that we both look up at the same time during roll call.

The writing prompt was insanely ridiculous. Write a narrative describing your encounter with an object, building, etc. that demonstrates character. I should have written about the classic No. 2 pencil in my hand or the lovely test booklet with the easily erasible green ink cover. Instead, I wrote about a nonexistent willow tree perched by the banks of a nonexistent river. Writers are liars. I aim to please, and teachers are suckers for weepy melodramatic environmental moral stories.

Halfway into the essay (mine's resembled a vignette more than an essay), I decided my narrative was getting to happy-go-lucky for my taste. "Strands of green leaves graze the river's edge as if the willow was lowering her head to taste the water" and "hopeful hearts and lovers' initials etched in her bark" just aren't morbid enough for this hopeless tragic. (Is tragic the right word? What's the opposite of "hopeless romantic"?)

So I ended the story with the whirring of chainsaws and the clearing of land for a new "Riverside Apartment Complex."

Very cute, I know.

I'll also mention that the proctor initally forbade any writing after the answer sheet was turned over. Like a good girl, I obeyed for about an hour. Bored out of mind, and being the idiot who forgot her ipod at home, I wrote another tragic vignette as usual.


The lovesong writer sings of colors, crimson passion green envy blue drowning black mourning, rejected by girls worth his time and adored by girls too cheap to fuck. In the Heartbreak Hotel he stays, a refugee playing chords and arpeggios on heartstrings.

They fawn over him, worship him, sacrifice pieces of their own beating hearts for this earthen god. His songs are about the One Who Got Away. Who is she, they ask but each time he responds with the same masked smile. No one knows who turned down a god, made him fall from his heavenly throne like a falling star, burning from his own heat and passion until he made impact with the earth. Just another immobile stone heart.

And in the ashes, the lovesong writer sings.

Sibyl

"How have you been?" Your face is unreadable, speckled with the shadows cast by the scented candles. I never liked those aromatic scents of french vanilla sugar or summer citrus - too exotic and dizzying like the incense in the nest of a gypsy fortune teller.

A fortune teller. Maybe I am the Sibyl, the prophetress, turning the cards one by one as my fate spells out before me. That instant you crossed my mind, I turned the corner to see you locked in her arms. There was something different about this one; I'd never seen you like this before, and I've watched you from a distance this whole time.

"Fine." That was always the easy answer. No questions asked. Fine was a norm. "Shitty" would have provoked a thousand questions, something I found no patience for anymore. Time to turn the tables. "So who is she?"

The instant I see the corner of your lip turn upwards I know we've reached the point of no return. I don't even hear you say her name, I can already hear it in your voice, a lilt that had been buried underground, brought to the surface by her constant sunshine and showers of affection.

It's so amusing I want to just rip off this mask of compassion and laugh until my lungs die out. Those fairytales and happy endings never talk about the outsiders. The ones who watch the "destined" ones fall in love. You can see it long before the thought ever crosses their minds, and yet there is nothing you can do to stop it. Like a terminal illness, you count the seconds ticking down until the inevitable happens.

"How about you? Are you seeing anyone?"

Stop caring. You don't really want to know, so let's end it now. I laugh.

"He's gorgeous. Huge. Haven't you heard of him? Moby Dick."

I'm only joking and you know it too. This whole farce is a joke, and the punchline has ended with me.

A Feeble Attempt at Poetry

There's something beneath this tree
A lonely gravestone no one can see
Crimson petals, so lovely, so bloody,
It sheds red tears, this bleeding tree

Just another ghost story
They whisper, there's supposed to be
Something else buried beneath this tree.
These milk-white bones, that's me.



Mark Twain is brilliant.

"Last week I stated that this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister and now wish to withdraw that statement."

"When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained."

" Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."

" Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she has laid an asteroid."

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society."

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. I consider them unwise and I know they are dangerous. Also, sinful. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet retired spot and kill him."

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."

"Of the commandments, only a single one of the 10 has found ministerial obedience; multiply and replenish the earth. To it sinner and saint, scholar and ignoramus, Christian and savage are alike loyal."

"Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."

"There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry."