Chimera Speaks

givemeajobplease:

The jeweler is a family jeweler, he lives in Philly. He made her a ring for her eighteenth birthday from her father’s cufflinks and an old ring. You’re going to make her one from a family ring. Something new and better. I’m listening, sort of. 

It’s just…will I ever want a ring from someone?

Is anyone ever going to want the Polaroid of me that didn’t turn out so great? See that in a box some day and love it and need to have it like the way they’d eye a pair of sneakers or that sandwich? Is anyone ever going to want little pieces of me? Want to collect them?

I know how I love people. How I look at people. I collect things. Your old college id, the award you got for Most Improved in high school gym class, your favorite color is blue, the random house in Park Slope that looks like a castle is your favorite. I think I just want someone who will look at me the same. Like something to collect over time, never complete or full of it. Keep some place special. Not contain me, that’s not what I’m saying, but know me special. 

You’re really ready to propose. Probably after your trip to Amsterdam in late July. Is she ready? You hope so.

I am not afraid no one will ever want to spend the rest of their life with me, I am afraid no one who does will love me in a way that makes me feel like the tiny ceramic box from Greece that I wrote about in third grade when we were given the writing prompt If you had to save one thing from a burning fire, what would it be? I brought it to school wrapped in every bit of tissue I could find in my parent’s house and I unwrapped the top and cradled it the way a little kid would probably hold a bird’s nest with pretty blue eggs in it. I beamed as I shared it. I held it in my lap on the bus ride home, lifting it up a bit just before we hit bumps. I want that.

the first time you kiss a girl, you will wonder why there has to be a name for this. why you cannot just love the soft of her mouth and the sharp of her color and the tentative sigh of her hand cupping the taut flesh before your breasts begin without having to re-arrange every label you never thought to struggle with.

she shows you a song and at home, alone, you listen to it and wonder if digital files wear out, and memorize every lyric, as though if you learn it, you will learn her.

boys you have kissed, and quivered over calloused fingers and burgeoning fuzz and her fingers are calloused and her eyes are dark and your knees are weak and there is not better or worse, just different. and bright and new and confusing.

you hold it close to you because it feels right there, and then one day it begins to feel like hiding it. so you whisper honesty across a dim room, and a girl that is not her slides subtly away from you, and her nose folds into little disgusting wrinkles that you could draw right now if you had to, from memory. and then you think, maybe it was a secret, and so it becomes one.

and there are other girls but they are never other girls. and the song doesn’t remind you of her because you play it everywhere, until it is made vague and mundane. and you are a coin with two sides that hides her head in the sand and only ever tells tales.

mourn that your irises 
have never been shone to glistening
with hope and wonder and enchantment

mourn that your hopes
have never been crushed merciless
under the clumsy feet of disappointment 
that your blood as never boiled
over the heat of the moment
over the flames of righteous indignation
that lick mercilessly at your patience

mourn that you
have never suspended yourself like a star
in the gleaming air above disbelief

it seems to me that the cool kids
spend a lot of time smirking knowingly from sidelines
quiet fools
while the rest of us spin in dizzy circles
and grow bone weary from screaming
and live and live and live