never, ever quite
Obverse. Reverse. The other side. The Other. Not the One but the Other. The words echoed. Empty room. Why was she always just someone else? The only time she wasn't was when she was mistaken for someone else. In a crowd, when eyes scanned the humanscape of faces, eyes resting on her, determining, processing, pulling memories of faces, names, places, and her face seemingly matched another's except her own eyes were just a little off; a bit too wide apart, otherwise she could have been the One. Always passed up for another person, more fun, more friendly, more hip, more cool. She was the kind that would spend Friday nights at home in her apartment in pajamas wondering what to do with herself, then eventually watching hours and hours of TV in color and then in sappy old black and white, withering until the impressions of her elbows and the back of her head were permanently embedded on the couch, and she had fallen asleep with her glasses on. Then it would be Sunday evening as she was throwing out the rest of her dinner that would never be eaten by anybody else and she wondered where her weekend had gone. The days would spin and spiral up into the towers of the city and she would come down from the eaves in a daze, lost, bewildered and still, nothing had changed. She was still just someone else. A body lost in the surging sea of life that heaved and hiccuped on the dirty streets that could barely hold them all. Legs scurrying up stairs, across stations, into train cars. Hands holding onto hand rails and hand bags. A face distantly familiar, but never, ever quite.She held onto her shopping bag tight. Or, she could just let go and let it drop to the floor. But the train lurched forward before she could decide, and someone was an inch away from her face, trying to right himself as the train gained steady speed. He whispered an apology then went back to ignoring her. The advertisement flickered past on the soot-black walls of the tunnel. Even that had a distinct face down in the dank, musty underground of the city. People would remember it as they emerged from the bowels, thinking that they would like to buy a car rather than take the grimy train again. She would come up into the air along with the rest of the crowd, and it was as if the stairwell had vomited a steady stream of people on the rush hour commute, and none of them would ever remember her again. She trudged home to an indistinct building, in a barely perceptible neighborhood, to one of many identical studio apartments, and opened the door to a cul-de-sac of dinner, shower, television, quiet, solitude and sleep. The next day she would leave and come back and do it again. There was once another life. Far different from this one, but it was only distantly familiar, though never, ever, quite.
3:39 PM | |
