Dear London...
2002-11-14, 12:23 a.m.
Dear London...
Did you know that's what I call you...? In journals and on the backs of notebooks... Scribbling like a schoolgirl... (I still have the pigtails and overalls)... X + London... me + you... And I know we were something before then... something magickal without all of the fluorescent harshness and blinding insecurities that are us today... But I found you there, in London... I found the true you... Like a newborn. Raw. Bloody. Sitting up in bed, crying. Hair amess. Eyes swollen near-shut from 3 years of tears all spent in 6 hours.
And it's funny the things I remember... Bits and pieces... Here. There. A boot filled with rainwater. my brain congealed with sticky yellow hash. sickly lemon shampoo. blackcurrant. neon orange shotglasses. your face, 4 feet above me, ruddy, laughing (please fucken kiss me). your face, 2 inches above me. (please fucken love me). tequila kisses and sweet grass. wading through crowds of strange languages 8 feet thick (pretending you were my girlfriend). arms around each other, faces pressed together in trafalgar square (pretending you loved me). wrapped up in institutional white sheets in a twin bunkbed... fitting together like lock and key (pretending that it would last forever). praying we could stay there. praying we could be london. forever.
It took me two days to say those 5 words... two days of strange glances... you behind a sheetmetal wall... sitting on your doorstep so you wouldn't see me cry... i never let you see me cry... Two days of me trying to think of the best way to apologize... I didn't want to apologize. I wasn't sorry then. I'm not sorry now. But I am sorry for one thing... and it has taken me five months this time... five months to say those same five words... "I'm sorry I'm not him". I am all I am. This is all I have. A scarred up, jagged body... Technicolor eyes hiding behind five-year-old hair... hiding in baggy clothes and red rubber shoes... hiding behind vague journal entries... hiding behind vodka bottles... hiding behind xanax and paxil and depakote smiles. hiding from your camera flash. hiding... hiding and running... from you.
We don't have london anymore... but I hold onto it like a child holding onto a spit-filled, chewed-ear teddy bear... dragged through the muck... filled with tears and silent curses... infused with lies and vodka smiles... I hold onto it... like i hold onto you... and maybe i will move on someday... but i'm taking you (london) with me... i'm tired of leaving things behind.
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