.metamorphosis:lucY

Lucy

..........

It seems my confusion stems from others ideas of love, and their actions within what they call love, and not my own. I know my own heart to be true, especially since (and not in spite of) my own past mistakes. My fear is just, this horror at the thought of another betrayal against me. I used to love only when it was convenient to do so for me - now I know different. I WILL that now and always from now on that I will not give love unjustly, nor betray another within it. Only in this way will I save my heart, for it will be closed forever otherwise, turned to solid metal that cannot be melted in any forge.

I purge today and tonight all the evil from my bowels, from my skin to my inner being. Rather aloneness than loneliness and betrayal; rather love than despair.

I try and break the bonds of sleep, of dream and of nightmare that has been my life of late. Now in my wakefulness I dream awake, now remembering in a lucid consciousness. My past washes over me as a great river, and where it flows over me I change its course. I will change my patterns.

..........

It's all circular. It all comes full circle, back to, back to an important thing, I'm sure it was important, but every-time I get close to it something happens. It's right there--it's!--fuck . . . gone again.

Take these bandages from my mouth and from my mind. The spider-webs of memory--I Will them to dis-appear.

If identity is memory of experiences and I forget what I was do I cease to exist of do I become something else entirely?

I don't remember what the answer was supposed to be but suppose it doesn't matter because I am now another Alice? What is this skin I've shed? A ghost of shadow of a thing once lived or a puppet of a think I never was but still supposed to be? I don't believe it!

My thoughts are circling 'round my head, trying to drown what's already at the bottom of the levy.

I'm so far away I'm so far away I'm so far away. But I'll be there to save you; to save me.

I always do. Right?

Some of me is still here.

..........

There comes a time where things have just got to end. Lucy comes up to me in the bar, obviously drunk. She is swaying, slightly, not as much as me but at this point, who the fuck cares, right? And I say to her, the love of my life, "Do you want a drink. Or something. You know I love you, sweetheart." And I'm being honest as shit, not caring that her friends are there, not caring how I look. My hand is lightly pressing her shoulder. I mean, at this point what do I have too loose, right? And you know, you know what she does? She just looks at me, looks right in my eyes and says, just says to me so quietly I have to lean in over the sound of the bass drums pounding in my ears, "Alice, yeah so you're so in love with me but I just can't do this again." She stops, Lucy does, and looks me right in the eyes. Stops for a second.

And I turn away from her. I turn away from her. One of the most gorgeous women I've ever known. And I say to her, I actually say to this beautiful model-icious woman- "It's alright honey, I don't really mean it. I'm just your friend, really", I say with emphasis on that word, as if I really meant anything.

But of course I do. I love her and she's blown me off. But as she turns to leave, she turns around, says to me, no one else is looking, she knows it, says "I wish, I wish, you know, things were different. Wish I," here she pauses, "could really be myself. 'Cause I'm not myself, I'm just you . . . "

Just you.

My world ends. Lucy is looking down at the floor. She won't meet my eyes. It's not as if I'm giving her the stare-down. I'm half-looking at the floor, but glancing at her often to see if she wants my gaze. One look from her confirms nothing, only that, only that she is afraid.

But afraid of only herself. Because what is she but me? "It was too much," she was saying. "Too much because you really don't know me. You think you do but how can you?"

I blurt out angry, "How can I when you haven't let me? All I've wanted . . . "

"All I wanted is what you never gave me. Its not my fault--I wanted to be there for you, but you left me, left me alone in that foreign place with those strangers. I pretended, pretended just for you to be like them and you rejected me."

And here in the fucking stupid story two days later Lucy rejects me, wants to be alone. Yeah. Like we're not all always alone. Say I'm not bitter. Go ahead.

It's not true. I don't care anymore. Not bitter, more just disappointed in the sad state of so called "human affairs" department.

You can shove your 'human affairs' right down your fucking throat for all I care. I'm fucking done.

[So where am I going with this? Is it a story about what I thought was going on or what I wished was, so I can bring it to some stupid conclusion? All my vague drunken memories, confusions, meeting strangers I won't (can't) remember--I drink to escape stupidity and remain immersed in it. I want meaning and conversation and memory, but more than those lasting, deep things I want hedonism and fucking and food and drink and smoke and . . . I want to wake up feeling good. Feeling good about myself and feel good in my body and not hung-over and stupid. But I remain angry and hung-over and tired.]

"I'd no idea," she sighed, putting her hand on Alice's thigh. She paused. "Does this moment really exist?"

Here she took her hand off Alice's leg. Lucy looked into her eyes, more so than anyone had done for ages. "Forever, forever do I want this moment to exist.

"But maybe it can." Lucy looked deeper into Alice's eyes and moved her hand to her face, touched her chin.

Can there be a kiss so simple and deeper than anything else before or after? It was simple, yet elegant; sweet and deep.

But then, then only did the razor come out, and Alice did cut the skin of Lucy, and things really did, really did become permanent. If only for a second.

And then.