Endings

It all ends here.

When I was 21 and taking the bus uptown to the Met. And then taking the bus downtown from the Met. And the sun poured through the green leaves like a woven blanket of foliage. And I was sitting close to the front row of that imaginary double-decker bus, thinking about myself when I was 15 taking the bus up to Shenton and the sky was grey and close to rain. I was with my ex boyfriend, who I was feverish with desire for, and I was so young I felt no such thing as hot shame. I was public with hunger and saliva. It’s over now.

I dreamt a dream of him when I was older, maybe I was 20. I dreamt a dream of him with his legs cut short and pieced back together. Like a robot person or a Frankenstein. To this day, I thought it was a sort of dream about forgiveness. Forgiveness by forcing an equality, by relinquishing his need for domination. When he held my hand in that dream, his hands were soft, white and cold. And the chrysanthemums in the sky exploded sparsely, with very little sound. There were ghost-like women in long white garments, swaying like plants in the field. I still don’t know what that means.

When I sat on the floor, mindless from grief. I smelled my armpits once and acknowledged that I was an animal that also secretes oil. We can all be identified by that involuntary sebum. I leaned against the door frame, not having showered for two days. I thought to myself, how strange, I smell like a pool of water that has been left out in the open. ‘Aloneness is the first hygienic measure', is what I learnt came from that smell of chlorine.

Reaching out and grasping the air, I feel a lever forming in my fist. If I pull that lever, a window opens and I am on a train like a cable car, descending the mountain. A gust of arctic air whips across my face and stings me like a raging tentacle. Momentarily, I am blinded and my entire vision is white and frozen by these wet pellets of snow. I keep going up the mountain just to go down. That’s what I think to myself. One doesn’t even need to have a reason to enjoy the ascent. When I was 22, I was in Lucerne with my family and we visited the Pilatus mountain, somewhere across the lake, during a blizzard. The snow piled up so high it blocked the view, and I warmed my hands around a cup of hot chocolate which promptly froze up when I dared to get close to the door. Why do these memories arise without context? I feel the need to put them down somewhere. The next day, on Christmas, we took the car out in search for dinner. And I disappeared into that dark room where attention dissolves only into a tiny golden droplet, before we appeared at a brown hut where we climbed downstairs to have spicy chinese hotpot. We cut the raw ground fish into even slices. We let the crushed peppers get stuck in our teeth.

I’m trying to remember my life from the very beginning. I don’t have these memories. I looked out into the window as a child thinking that if I looked out of the window enough I’d be able to escape on some ideal reverie. But reality only ever stared back at me with its resolute stillness. It refused to be anything it was not ready to be. Sometimes when I looked out of the window, I’d see people walking out of their homes. Sometimes, they'd push the carts of rubbish down the lane and emptied it into the trucks. There was very little pressure, nothing seemed precisely important. I know I lived like I was barely alive when I went to the board to write down the answers to some problems. At the time, I most admired the lives of jellyfish. I thought only they were allowed to be true.

When I was with you — you, who still monopolises that term — there was one morning I stood looking out of the window. Incapable of sleep, you were a sleep wrestler. You’d pull me toward you and crush your lips into my hair. Then you would sneeze, and push me away. I woke up and lifted myself out from under your tangled feet. I stood there looking into the windows of the neighbouring block. It was 4am. I stood there without moving for an hour, as if I had always known how to make time pass, and slowly the lights in these windows came alight. Like a checkerboard of individual lives. Someone came into the that kitchen and took out their laundry. It was dry now after a night of wind. When you came behind me, I didn’t notice until I tripped over your toe. But you had been so deft and silent, you parted several tendrils of my hair with your nose. You looked over my shoulder, trying to understand what it was that I was seeing, then when I finally noticed you, you looked at me full of love. I don’t know how the dark in your eyes even managed to smoulder and roll into itself that way. I was self conscious about the smell in my mouth so I chose not to kiss you.

You lay on the couch and it was too dark for colour. And spears of light rain fell like snowflakes outside. I let your face grow pale as we refused to switch on the lights. We lived in a cave, just you and I.

Love is creationary. But it is over, everything is over.

I loved you, looking outside. I loved you, looking in. I loved you remembering those days. I loved you, and that bagel in the park. I loved you, and the ants that crawled all over my finger. I loved you, we took that boat. I loved you naming the birds together. I loved you, the construction is done. I walked toward you knowing fully you would have destroyed me. On that first night we spent together I held a hand against your back which rose and fell with your deep breaths and asked for the courage to let you ruin me. To see it through, whatever it was. To see it through, your face on that pillow, after a night of being kissed all throughout my thighs. The walls were blue, and we were evicted, and there were immature vermin crawling out of the vents in the ceiling. I loved you, we took that bus. You gave me that clean wash of whatever it was we had, and dust motes flooded the air like cheerleaders high on champagne. You gave me that sight. I loved you, and the light was even tinged slightly green with that clarity. I took the bus home and lay in my bed that was still on the floor. My room was under construction. My family wanted me to have a space I could feel like a grown up in. I’ve now begun to accumulate vain waste.

Tonight, I want to remember it, I want to remember you. My love for you that innervated me with so much life, that I created a new life of equivalent magnetic force so that I could do the time we shared together justice. I created this life for you, I created this life as proof that the intensity of what we shared existed. I know you will never be able to tell. But a few days ago I was showering and I thought of showing you everyone I’ve brought into my orbit, and the spaces I’ve created, and all the dreams I had, and I wanted you to know that I did it for you. When I said in the past ‘How pathetic it is; to create a life to offer it to you on a dinner plate,’ but now I eat at my own table from the life I created though I did it initially and entirely for you. Isn’t that crazy?

You began this version of me, and now this version of me is completed. My love for you is my maker. You were the subject I built myself towards. I will always love you. Now my debt to you is done.