Douleurs

(d’esprit)

She laughed, and I noticed for the first time that her right front tooth was slightly chapped at the middle. It was too small that you had to look hard to see it, and maybe that was why I was just noticing it even after all the staring I’ve been doing on her face.

“How did this happen?” I asked, pointing at my front teeth, and immediately regretting it. Her smile fell, and she closed her mouth shut. It felt and looked as if she’d been practicing being asked about that her entire life.

“Uh… I was chewing at a pen’s tip in fourth grade, but I never really talked about it before, you see. I thought it would just wear away with time but, it never did. Funny huh?” she paused. “How… did you notice?”

I couldn’t help but see how as she talked, she was trying hard to keep her lips close together and hide her teeth, and I felt like absolute shit.

“I just did… I guess I never did before because your smile was so pretty.” I stated awkwardly. By the end of the sentence, I felt as smooth as chunky peanut butter on an oat biscuit.

“Was? hm.” She looked at me and raised an eyebrow friskily. She opened her mouth again to say something but this time, a flock of seagulls coming from the distance stole her attention, along with my chance to ask her if we could move away from the sun’s scorching embrace.

She stared at them as they moved over the sea, and I just stood there next to her, feeling the sun as it made my head hotter and hotter by the minute but refraining from talking because I didn’t want to interrupt her sudden trance.

Suddenly, she turned to face me. She stared at my face with a broad smile without saying anything and for a moment, she was starting to creep me out.

I was about to ask what she was doing when she just moved backwards and extended her arm, pointing her thumb at my face with one eye closed.

“What… are you doing?”

She grinned mischievously before putting her arm down, and responded confidently, “I am measuring the angular size of the moon.”

~♦~

It makes me really sad how my favorite sounds, the ones I can feel for the most, do not speak human. The’re of languages that are impossible to be written down, and I don’t like that I don’t have a way to keep them with me for a long time.

My heart claims that it can keep them. But, I own a lying heart, or at least one that doesn’t know itself that well. Neither of us can really know what’s real and what’s not.

And you know, even if it can keep them, I wouldn’t trust it to do so for a very long time. It makes me really sad how forgetful my heart is, and how it tends to love countless things all at once. It drains me.

It’s been a week, and I don’t feel real any more.

I feel blessed that I’ve had the opportunity to see and feel things that are not real, but sometimes putting my feelings into words and images isn’t enough, and sometimes it’s not even possible to begin with.

Most of the time, actually, it feels like I’m ruining and deforming everything by mixing them up. I know that words are not feelings, and that feelings are not sounds, and that sounds are certainly not colors.

On another note, I really miss getting the chance to see life happening.

I miss feeling things on seeing certain people or hearing their voices. I miss even the ones I never have and might never really meet.

I want to talk about them and their stories, the small things I see and hear when no one’s looking or listening, and sometimes when no one’s even there but me, but I’m not sure if anyone would like to hear them. I think they’re worth being heard, though, so I might just spill them here bit by bit whenever I feel like it.

Among many other things, I’ve felt like the ghost in the corner, the huge pile of ink and papers, the grey box that stares out of the window for three hours at the same things every day… but most importantly, I felt like I was one of the people a handful of times, and that feeling was something that came with seeing the world as an okay place to be.

The few hours I could spend outside of my cocoon were the only hours during which I’ve ever felt real, and for that I am very grateful.

I miss being able to do things that aren’t thinking, and I miss not having to spend so much time with the mean, cold wind.

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