Tuesday, January 13, 2009

The Boy Who Never Told Anything

This is about a girl I knew not so long ago. That she had the ability and not the craving to be happy was what I’ll always remember about her. Needless to say, it was she who wrote this and not me.

* * *

The arm beneath her head was falling asleep and she wiggled her legs a bit. She always slept with her legs thrown about in gay abandon as if they were breaking free from the shackles of being prim and proper the whole day. There was a slight chill in the air and the blanket felt warm against her body. There was some grit on the sheet. A full moon was smiling cherubically, her battalion of stars fading in the glory of her pale light. Sleep was a few groggy breaths away so she turned to lie on her stomach, propping up her elbows so she could look at the moon better. She smiled at the imperfect circle it was today. One side looked slightly worn down as if the sun’s fury had melted her to make the stars.

Thoughts often rummaged through her mind like inquisitive children. Poking through the carefully stashed away memories, their grubby hands undoing the covers she had draped them in. Sometimes those fingers tickled up a laughing anecdote. She had read about people smiling into nothingness. The first time she did it herself she self-consciously shrugged her shoulders. But then some people, some weird little things often made her mouth dance into a crazy little curve, those laugh lines giving her a look of wry abandonment. He used to find her laugh lines infinitely attractive. She didn’t even notice them before he mentioned it. And now each time she looked in the mirror, she made it a point to smile, just to see those lines crease around her mouth.

Thinking of him saddened her, her spirit suddenly weighed down by her heart. And with nothing better to do, she reached out for her journal, flipping through its pages, covered in her scribbles. Pages of doodles and psychedelic designs. No matter how many dogs and flowers she started off with, she always managed to end up making concentric circles – an indication of her eddying thoughts? There were realms of angry outpourings, strings of quotes, cuttings of interesting ads and passages of mundane nothings.

Her journal. Her closest friend, her stubborn conscience, her cruelest critic. Often uncomfortable around her closest friends, she managed to talk to this inanimate book with unnerving enthusiasm. With fierce loyalty. With unbridled passion. She carried on rummaging, reading a quote, seeing a long-forgotten picture, some calculations of her monthly expenditure gone awry. The stars were beginning to fall asleep. She felt peaceful. The hammering of her mind was gently soothing itself into slumber. With a smile she hummed a silly tune.

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