Lotus Petals
An (adapted) extract from The Menagerie
⚠️ Miscommunication in an imbalanced relationship, one of manipulation and deceit. A spiralling admittance of a troubled mind.
I shall be leaving this short story available here for approx. two months, after which it’ll only be available via ebook and paperback. I hope you understand.
These are my notes of the pillow, and they coax me to the dawn. I wake in your arms and watch you, wondering if we have any tomorrow’s left, if we have anything left to save from the dying embers of our fire. You and I are like, we hide from the sun and live in the shadows; we were made for each other.
And we both love words, but we cannot speak.
We’ve never been able to fully bridge that gap between felt and told because of circumstance. You are He and I am She, and never shall We be combined with true communication; I find it so impossible to be honest about how I feel.
I’m scared if I admit something, it will fade away.
Communicate with me. True conversation to dissolve white noise. That is all we have, white noise, static that hides our true feelings in case someone notices and someone speaks.
In these repeated dreams, these fevered thoughts, I believe and I hope, I taste the desire that fuels us. Though these words cascade over and again, they are here and committed just as I am committed and here for you. They are important, worth repeating, worth holding onto against my thawing heart.
I am a mistress of contradiction and catastrophe and, I reflect while you sleep, my thoughts are lost to you with every sigh. I watch you and wonder in numb emptiness about something we said. Something I admitted. Retracted.
You do not understand.
How could anyone understand when I can’t understand? I don’t have the words to explain myself, so how can you say you understand what I feel? I can’t voice my emotions and wouldn’t be able to tell you even if I could.
I don’t know what to feel anymore.
I don’t understand.
All I know is you don’t care. No one cares. No one understands.
I am an enigma to myself.
I’m falling apart and you don’t appreciate it.
I cry, my eyes anchored with salty water. My tears fall like lotus petals into oceans too wide to cross, too distant is the horizon from the shore I stand on. The sky as leaden as my head, my love a burden I want to burn; I want to fall and drown with the pain I feel for you.
Such is the strength of what we have.
What we had.
Is it as lost as the tears among the ocean? The sea is receding, even that rushes from me; in its haste, the sand burns my feet, each grain a hot cinder, gouging into my flesh. I need to move but I can’t. I feel too heavy to move, as if I’m swimming through air. Air that is mercury rather than oxygen.
I only disintegrate.
I’m unable to smile.
I’m crushed.
I’ve been here before; can’t you rescue me?
Don’t you want to help me?
You asked me once, but now you desert me. Your questions had charm; they coaxed me to feel for you, they coaxed me to love when I felt empty of it. Where is the promise you made me? Where is the vow that is now nothing but broken memory?
Did I merely imagine this; is it a trick played by myself on me?
Try to comprehend this loneliness I’m always drawn to. The pain that swirls below my skin, the fear that hooks through my blood. Be the light to chase the shadows from my heart. You only have to smile, and I succumb. And I regret my behaviour when you leave.
My smile twists to tears.
Maybe I’m purely alive in my dreamworld. My fantasies. My nightmares.
All I can offer is doubt.
A theatre of many acts.
Take what you want, take everything; take my life. It’s yours; it’s all yours. I don’t need it anymore. If you won’t drain me of everything I have, then you’ll have failed me.
Then I’ll have to take revenge.
Such sweet, venomous revenge.
I can tie you here. I could leave you here.
An echo of the desire to conquer you, to dominate you, to force you to see me as the queen I deserve to be. A slice of hope, of how I need you to see my worth, to worship me in the way I need you to. But every fucking pledge I make, every silent wish I score through my skin, is as lost as those tears. Those petals.
Drowned.
You stare into your coffee, inhaling its cheap aroma as a substitute for me. You are unable to meet my raw eyes. Your cigarette smoke coils before you, shrouding you, keeping us apart.
Once you would lie with me for hours, cascading my hair through your fingers; fingers that loved as an extension of your being. They painted on my flesh as I wrote on yours. Was that all the communication we ever had? Our eyes held so much. I implore you to understand how lonely I feel, even though you smother me.
You’re the most faithful man I know.
But I’ve lost my faith in you.
All you see is black coffee, your veiled eyes reflected in the swirling, shaking water, as you blow ever-decreasing circles.
Are the whispers of my love enough to bring the dreams my mind embraces to life? Do I want to bring them to life? Do I want to actualise my fears, to manifest the pain I feel?
Why can’t I tell you this? Would it wreck the peaceful silence of the morning, the sacred feeling as we sneak away from our illicit love to the pretence of reality? Why can’t I explain how torn I feel? How empty you leave me?
Every fucking time.
Your touch could fix me.
A spider’s gossamer thread graced with dew draping over my flesh; delicate, embracing, a shroud that couldn’t be removed without difficulty. It could push into me; a splinter to infect me with happiness. Dry my hushed tears with your fingertips, as you used to do.
Drink my pain away.
Recognise this hollowness I return to.
Why treat me like this?
No one ever treats me like this. I can’t eat, can’t think. I can’t sleep. I wake with your image, and now you say to walk away. To forget it.
I inhale you.
[I love you.]
It’s the days, the hours, away from you before we can crawl our way toward the dawn that I can’t stand. People ask if I am okay, I look so tired these days. I tell them I’m suffering a little insomnia. But I can’t tell them how you’ve chained me to a new circadian rhythm.
You keep me awake, but I don’t care; it’s not as though I could ever fall asleep while you’re with me. Our connection wordless as we speak in flesh. In screams.
You do things to me that I simply can’t comprehend; yet I demand you understand me. Is it me that asks too much of you?
I feel so damned small.
I need the chase. I need the excitement. I want the security.
It is the dichotomy that devastates me.
You say that this was all in my imagination if we are ever discovered. That nothing ever happened. If anyone asks then there is nothing, was nothing, will be nothing. We are colleagues, friends, if that, in public. But you planted the seeds there anyway. The thought is trapped; the thought of love a butterfly fighting in a net, a moth dancing too close to a flame.
We are both liable to get burned if neither acts soon.
I’m trapped in layers of rich silk, suffocated in the elegance of the feeling but unable to shout about the touch I receive. My joy has been denied. Yet, you trust me to be silent; I would never say a word. This web we are caught in cocoons me. This haven we’ve forged is my comfort, and you want to take it away.
Why do you?
I hate you for that.
You think you’re so great but if you fly any higher…
…God will snatch you.
I don’t know if I would care if you left me.
We were never really together. There’s only the promise of a future that draws our silent touch. I just need to know exactly where I stand, and you won’t tell me. Not in words. But do I need words when I have your touch? Your time?
Words are cheap and buy cheap thrills.
I’m confused and I need understanding.
You are intense but hidden. I scream faster, faster, harder, stop. Breathe. Go. It was in the stockroom that I took stock. I was intoxicated now… I am intoxicated. You leave me in my stupor, playing with words that have two meanings, like you have two sides, and I have two minds. You grind and then you hide.
I don’t care if you mean it, but I need it.
Maybe I want an ideal I will never find.
I’m just emotional and selfish; a conceited little bitch who’ll only learn new tricks if they’ll be reciprocated. But, even then, I know some very, very good ones.
Maybe I’ll show you if you’re very, very good. And lucky.
I dare not voice my feelings, to show you how needy I am. Because that is what this means. I’m confused, I mean what I say but I can’t always say what I mean. And until then, please look away.
I just want to be loved, like everyone does. But I’ve known love, and that makes me so much harder to please. And right now, all of this is an ultra-mind-fuck.
I look up, and smile.
It doesn’t crack into tears, as I’d believed it would.
You meet my gaze.
My hand on your chest, feeling your heart beat.
Our masks in place, our divergence set.
I open my lips to speak, but you kiss them.
You can find this, and other short stories, poetry, and vignettes, in The Menagerie. Or, you can get a feel for the dark vibe of the book with a listen to the playlist.
