quarantine: le soir deuxieme

12.39, say the white figures on the lower right-hand side of the screen. i haven’t been awake and alone with my thoughts for...years, it seems. how it brings me back to those late nights at my desk in front of the open window. clear cold air outside. the moon stalking her solitary way through the dark grey jagged clouds. glasgow of my heart all around. mika’s falsetto keeping the night’s high still fresh. most often drops of damp on my lashes and hair. mirror me staring back at her outside self. which of us is the most real, i wonder; that girl with the slightly smudged eye make-up and pale skin, i don’t feel the way a girl like that should feel at all.

emerald green wool coat and black scarf tossed carelessly on the bed. earrings in a disco jumble on bedside table and the soft lamplight to cast forgiving shadows over them all. were you happier then than you are now, or was it just a hurried riot of snatched emotion, everything to be tasted and left in a few quick months because you always had the end in mind.

so you confuse me all the time, but perhaps there is no reason to be confused, perhaps again i am the victim of my own illusions. i seem to have been standing on the brink of life for years, shivering on the edge. but i want to fall off this cliff. i just need someone to hold my hand.

there was so much potential in our first meeting. where has it all gone, that flame barely kindled, flickering on the beach where we watched the sun go down together. did you come to the same conclusion as i did, that there could be nothing lasting in this, that our beliefs and convictions were too strong to be reconciled. or were you just…not interested enough. or not at all. that doubt haunts me.

and thoughts of you are always with me, i say your name quietly to myself in crowded rooms, in bustling passageways, alone in the dark spaces of the night, and strangely, embarrassingly, it is a comfort. a guilty pleasure, and also a self-deluding one.

but would you have wanted to be my friend if i had been less than what i am? the selves we are now were attracted to each other for the intrinsic value of each. i trust your ability to discriminate, if not mine. and if i knew for sure that you had valued me, appreciated my worth, i might be able to move on.

think well of me. remember me, as i am now, and remember the time we had together. that island summer will always be ours, and i. don’t think i will walk those beaches again.

there will be today to pass, and then tomorrow for nostalgia and the distant sound of bagpipes, and the feel of familiar streets beneath my feet. it was the beginning of summer sun and smirr in the air, daisies starring the green and all this imprinted upon innocence, to last a lifetime.

i have ideals, and I will always be a prisoner of my dreams, in thrall to what may never be.

i will never fit in because i know too well the difference between right and wrong.