—eyes, staring back at me. Irises shimmering like the rare stones I’d found in a stream at the ripe age of seven, stones that now sat in an alcove, behind a fake brick, in a wall, in an alley, in a city, in a province, in a country, far away. I returned briefly to that world and to those stones, so close in memory even if physically distant.
“Well?” She said. My hand flinched, and then I grabbed the edge of the table tight like a hand. I wanted to hold hers, but knew I never would again. I gazed at Ivy, and at the sunlight pooling underneath each ridge of the blinds. Everything shimmered, and something inside of me gave way.
“It’s a long story. And I’m not sure where I should start.” She sighed, glanced at her phone, looked at the wall for a moment, as if reluctant.
“I… have time. Do you want some water?” she said.
“Do you have anything else?”
“No.” She paused. “No, sorry.”
I scratched my cheek. “Okay. I’ll start."
Failure: An interlude
The faucet pouring water over my fingers, and twenty seconds felt far too long. I looked around, barely tall enough to see the mirror. No parents. I pulled my fingers away and then felt dirty.
"Small-town blues." I learned that idiom early, and I felt it every day.
I sat at my scratched desk, gazed at those ancient concrete walls, and brushed past all the paper-mache people with their glued-on smiles and wallpaper clothes. So many teachers and students with glued-on smiles fluttering away.
Miranda, my table partner in homeroom, was going to the Maldives over the summer. She gave me one of her smirks as she talked and all I could see was the pink lip gloss slightly smudged at the edge of her mouth. Later that day, I learned a few more swear words in the park behind the school, older kids staring at me gleefully. Greasy hair shimmered in the afternoon sun, and I felt loved in a strange, impersonal way. I sat in my room and tumbled the words in my mouth like I was sharpening weapons.
Report card. Math: D+, in fat black lettering. My father looked like he wanted to yell at me for a while, then he looked sad, and then he looked at me the way he always looked at himself in the mirror on Monday evenings, and that was the worst of all. My mom patted me on the back and gave me a scoop of ice cream out of sympathy. I cried and threw the ice cream in the trash, and everything hurt. Failure.
High school. I was still so painfully small, like a chick writhing in its nest. I signed up for a single club freshman year, Speech and Debate, and left after two weeks. The debate coach called me a quitter. Later, I managed to find an old punching bag in the garage. Reddening knuckles. Embarrassment was the new normal.
First girlfriend, sophomore year. I don't remember her name. Neither of us liked each other very much. We held hands—cool, I thought—and my grades plummeted. I knew that I was losing the few things I had. Failure…
A hole in the fence, metal bending outwards like someone about to vomit. The building was cold and dark and full of dripping paint, trash, symbols wreathed in deja vu. I felt briefly, morbidly alive. Dust streaked my cheek like a corpse’s lipstick.
I sat in my little corner of the world and watched everything else accelerate, shooting by, trailing those gorgeous neon streaks found in traffic timelapses. I closed myself away.
Then I met you, and for a little while things felt different.
I thought you would be enough. I’m sorry to say it—it’s really not your fault—but you weren’t. I'd fallen too far into the murk I was becoming. Sure, I played my happy role, and almost everyone around me believed it. But when I went home and lay in my too-warm bed and saw the light of the cars outside stuttering across the plaster, I knew that being what I was, nothing would ever be enough. My life stretched before me, offices and dying street lamps, Failure, and those same peeling smiles that I had always known.
Then I thought of the campfires of my youth, my father’s eyes peering happily at me through the flickering darkness, the way the trees embraced us, the way the ash smelled—musky and raw—and I knew what I had to do. I would remake myself, remake my world, and then I could become something beautiful. I would step out of the husk that called itself a Failure and live..
So I did. I saved up, schemed, and shed it all. It hurt. I dislocated myself, like a superfluous limb, out of the socket that was my world and into a new one. I roamed for a long time. I looked for people and things to come down and pull me out of my pit, perfect saviors for my perfect dilemma. I never found them. All I found were skyscraper windows still shooting down their rays of light and piercing my fragile heart.
Escape, exile, return, regret—my story can be described in a million verses, named in a million tones. But all there is now is the unsolvable puzzle of my life, placed here quietly before us. I am trying to gather the pieces, to scavenge whatever I can.
* * *
It was an awful story, and poorly told. We sat in the cold silence. Maybe I’d wanted to see some pity in her eyes, and if I looked very, very closely, maybe there was. But there was also irritation, what could’ve been disgust, and what definitely was disappointment. I took all of those things as a sign to stand up. Suddenly, the urge to run, to abandon the reunion, overcame me. And the walls seemed to have so many piercing--
“Well?” She said. My hand flinched, and then I grabbed the edge of the table tight like a hand. I wanted to hold hers, but knew I never would again. I gazed at Ivy, and at the sunlight pooling underneath each ridge of the blinds. Everything shimmered, and something inside of me gave way.
“It’s a long story. And I’m not sure where I should start.” She sighed, glanced at her phone, looked at the wall for a moment, as if reluctant.
“I… have time. Do you want some water?” she said.
“Do you have anything else?”
“No.” She paused. “No, sorry.”
I scratched my cheek. “Okay. I’ll start."
Failure: An interlude
The faucet pouring water over my fingers, and twenty seconds felt far too long. I looked around, barely tall enough to see the mirror. No parents. I pulled my fingers away and then felt dirty.
"Small-town blues." I learned that idiom early, and I felt it every day.
I sat at my scratched desk, gazed at those ancient concrete walls, and brushed past all the paper-mache people with their glued-on smiles and wallpaper clothes. So many teachers and students with glued-on smiles fluttering away.
Miranda, my table partner in homeroom, was going to the Maldives over the summer. She gave me one of her smirks as she talked and all I could see was the pink lip gloss slightly smudged at the edge of her mouth. Later that day, I learned a few more swear words in the park behind the school, older kids staring at me gleefully. Greasy hair shimmered in the afternoon sun, and I felt loved in a strange, impersonal way. I sat in my room and tumbled the words in my mouth like I was sharpening weapons.
Report card. Math: D+, in fat black lettering. My father looked like he wanted to yell at me for a while, then he looked sad, and then he looked at me the way he always looked at himself in the mirror on Monday evenings, and that was the worst of all. My mom patted me on the back and gave me a scoop of ice cream out of sympathy. I cried and threw the ice cream in the trash, and everything hurt. Failure.
High school. I was still so painfully small, like a chick writhing in its nest. I signed up for a single club freshman year, Speech and Debate, and left after two weeks. The debate coach called me a quitter. Later, I managed to find an old punching bag in the garage. Reddening knuckles. Embarrassment was the new normal.
First girlfriend, sophomore year. I don't remember her name. Neither of us liked each other very much. We held hands—cool, I thought—and my grades plummeted. I knew that I was losing the few things I had. Failure…
A hole in the fence, metal bending outwards like someone about to vomit. The building was cold and dark and full of dripping paint, trash, symbols wreathed in deja vu. I felt briefly, morbidly alive. Dust streaked my cheek like a corpse’s lipstick.
I sat in my little corner of the world and watched everything else accelerate, shooting by, trailing those gorgeous neon streaks found in traffic timelapses. I closed myself away.
Then I met you, and for a little while things felt different.
I thought you would be enough. I’m sorry to say it—it’s really not your fault—but you weren’t. I'd fallen too far into the murk I was becoming. Sure, I played my happy role, and almost everyone around me believed it. But when I went home and lay in my too-warm bed and saw the light of the cars outside stuttering across the plaster, I knew that being what I was, nothing would ever be enough. My life stretched before me, offices and dying street lamps, Failure, and those same peeling smiles that I had always known.
Then I thought of the campfires of my youth, my father’s eyes peering happily at me through the flickering darkness, the way the trees embraced us, the way the ash smelled—musky and raw—and I knew what I had to do. I would remake myself, remake my world, and then I could become something beautiful. I would step out of the husk that called itself a Failure and live..
So I did. I saved up, schemed, and shed it all. It hurt. I dislocated myself, like a superfluous limb, out of the socket that was my world and into a new one. I roamed for a long time. I looked for people and things to come down and pull me out of my pit, perfect saviors for my perfect dilemma. I never found them. All I found were skyscraper windows still shooting down their rays of light and piercing my fragile heart.
Escape, exile, return, regret—my story can be described in a million verses, named in a million tones. But all there is now is the unsolvable puzzle of my life, placed here quietly before us. I am trying to gather the pieces, to scavenge whatever I can.
* * *
It was an awful story, and poorly told. We sat in the cold silence. Maybe I’d wanted to see some pity in her eyes, and if I looked very, very closely, maybe there was. But there was also irritation, what could’ve been disgust, and what definitely was disappointment. I took all of those things as a sign to stand up. Suddenly, the urge to run, to abandon the reunion, overcame me. And the walls seemed to have so many piercing--