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requited love
I let my eyelids droop. They were almost shut when I opened my eyes again, and then let them close slowly. Almost asleep. I was lying in bed, arms folded on my stomach. I didn't have to fuss about with imagining lines of force linking my chakras or grounding or any of that nonsense; there it was, regular as clockwork. It reminded me of one of the recent Peter Gabriel videos; there was a flat wall of mechanical bits, pieces of clocks, floppy drives, cogs and assorted parts, all of them moving out of synchronisation with the others. It was fascinating, just lying there and watching the motion. i knew this phase wouldn't last long. It didn't. The parts in the very centre of the forced front view began synchronising their movement, and gradually a vertical seam appeared, the ratcheting parts sliding aside to reveal her face. I drew in a breath sharply... I hadn't seen her, physically, for over two months, but her sharp beauty still affected me. I could only see her from her chin up to the middle of her forehead; the rest of her body was obscured by the mechanical wall. A stray wisp of golden-red hair escaped from the strip of minutely-etched copper which held her forehead secure. My attention was captured by the detail on this strip, reminiscent of some of HR Giger's work when she suddenly opened her eyes, the irises that strange blue-green-grey shade that you can never pin down. The light illuminating this scene was like that of an underground pool; flickering, wavering. Her eyes were half-open in that sensuous look, the one that affected me so much, the one she always claimed that she'd been unaware that she was doing. I knew better. Her lips twitched, the upper lip with its sharp line, the lower one large, sumptuous, a pillow for the upper to rest on. The tiniest of smiles, a crease in one corner of her mouth and then her eyes closed, the long, dark brown lashes sitting on the upper part of her cheekbones, subtle curves in the line of her jaw. She was beautiful. I couldn't count the number of times I'd fallen to my knees and worshipped her, when we were together. And I'd left her. "Are you going to speak to me?" I thought. Her eyes opened again, looking straight at me, pinning me to the bed. "You have to stop agonising like this," she thought. "The truth be known, I kicked you out. You were just too thick to realise it." "Oh. that makes me feel so much better." The machinery around her paused for a moment, then resumed its workings at a more leisurely pace. "You've got your life. I've got mine. What's the problem?" I could feel a band of pressure across my forehead, similar to the one across hers. "Can we still be friends?" She closed her eyes, and the machinery began to close over her face, as if she were excluding me twice. "No." |
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