2/02/2007

Crinkled Foil, Stolen Tissues

She hid, whenever she could.

Clutching the well-worn pages of her favourite little pastimes, she hid behind the stolen fantasies unravelling at her feet. She felt different, alien from the rest of them, drumming foreign sounds incessantly into her ears. There was something soothing about these sounds she couldn’t quite understand, but knew she could decipher if she tried.

She felt as though she had grown up with the Man on the Moon; similar in principle, different in concept. She felt as though she’d been accidentally picked up by a beam of light from the distant stars and brought to live among her equals on this alien planet. One thing remained the same though: she was never without company. Except for her lone wanderings through the crowded corridors as she struggled to maintain the translucent smiles she had borrowed from the distant galaxies, her company dawdling behind.

She loved chocolate. She loved peeling away the colourful layers surrounding it, exposing the dark, solid, creamy centres within. She loved watching the smooth packaging tearing at her slightest touch, obeying her every whim as she carefully peeled it away. She loved watching the light bounce off the wrappings at the oddest angles as she rolled it up into a ball, watching the contrasting brightness of different patches of foil. It reminded her of the stars. Stars she wished on every so often, whenever she left the house after dark.

Every heart and every soul tells a story. Every mind shows a map. A map of the person it controls. She knew exactly who she was. The problem was figuring out who she wanted to be. Over the years, she had changed. Her experiences had scraped off the film of who she once was, like the gradual smoothing of wood under the influence of sandpaper, exposing the softer inner tones. She had become more aware of the effect of thoughts and actions, little things, like the virtually nonexistent crunch of gravel under the feet of an infant. They were magnified a thousand times over, squeezing into the saturated grey matter that passed for her brain. She was happy, she really was. She was simply waiting for her star to shine.

In the form of long, dark hair, dusty shelves and haunted smiles, Fear had always been a part of her vocabulary. The strongest were always hidden, murals to stare at in the deepest recesses of night. She realised how the loss of the comfort of security could, over time, leave people almost helpless, aching with the loss of the phantom limb. But she never seemed to be able to figure out what scared her the most. She knew it was there, she just never knew what it really was. She wondered whether they were secretly revealed in the dead of night, undercover of her infrequent dreams.

Over the years, she had taken bits of her favourite people and merged them into who she was. She hid behind a bundle of contradictions, behind her favourite past times, behind her favourite people. She was happy behind the crinkled foil and stolen tissues.

:D
6:50 PM