"I'm looking for companionship." - It was written on a wooden board with pure white chalk.
It was Saturday when I first saw it. It looked defenseless and lost, like coming from another world or maybe from other days, days long past by now. The letters were slender and determined to remain imprinted on one's heart - like the mourning call of a swan that lost her lover. It was the writing of one with bleeding wounds and plenty scars...
It was Monday when I got out of my house with one single thought: find the owner of the written board and maybe offer myself as a tribute to her silence. What good was I by myself anyway? Every single day the same vicious circle of events: ravished bed, bad hair that just wouldn't listen to the brush, a piece of toast left hanging on a white plate and hot tea with half a spoon of sugar. And sometimes there'd be someone's silhouette's profiling from underneath the covers of my bed, but never the same person twice. People come and go. We're but transitory existences in this timeless life. Why should have I made it all complicated by bringing someone in my life? And where could have I found that person when sincerity has been forbidden right before the very beginning of this life?
Tuesday. Another cup of tea and a map, all lying on the wooden surface of the kitchen table. And screams from upstairs where the only couple known to be still alive is once again throwing their clothes out through the open window. He's sleeping. On my bed, a man is sleeping. I don't know who he is or where he comes from. I just know he was half naked and his skin smelled of snow and apples. A nice smell. The smell of belonging to someone. And I had to have him. Naked, begging, screaming, suffering and crying, laughing and sighing - I had to have him all. One night, only for one night.
But he was there on Wednesday and Thursday as well - still on my bed, still naked, but smelling of ice and wild, unexplored woods.
Friday came and there was no sign that the rain would ever stop. Huge droplets hitting my window as if someone was throwing pebble stones like in the Shakespearean novel he never got to write. And my house was full of the smoke of one cigarette that was burning in between my fingers. Was it odd that even if I never smoked before I felt the need to inhale that smoke and let my lungs choke on it? Or was it odd that I bought a whole pack just to take one out and threw the rest of them? I don't know. I never smoked before.
Raining rain during my rainy day, when my mood was all rainy. A sad picture. And maybe wet from all the water invading it.
Laying on my bed, I watched the strange drawings on the ceilings. Rusty stains left behind by an old flood cause by an old tenant who killed himself in the tub. Stains that seemed to tell the story of my life: hands stretching out for something to grab and holding only on nothingness. For nothingness I had found everywhere I went.
And rain.
And smoke.
The incapability to find meaning in all the secrets that came climbing my walls, finding cover in between them.
Saturday and I was left on the floor, naked and smudged lipstick, a crumpled bill hiding in my tightly closed fist. I had problems breathing, adjusting to the suddenly cold air surrounding my skin. It felt like being underwater with this new him. A pleasure moving to pain as we moved through the salty liquid of muffled sounds. And then pain - the pain of feeling my flesh burning and of contracted lungs. It got stuck inside my head that my apartment was messy and I suddenly lost any interest in his beard and dark blue, fantasy like eyes.
Dirty.
Smelly.
Cold.
The body of a nobody.
And he left, angrily stomping on my floor, leaving other cracks in the wood under his soles, rude openings staring blankly at me now. He didn't say a word... or I didn't hear him say it as I was too busy trying to understand my broken mirror and the fine lines I discovered in the paint of my walls.
It was all crumbling down...
Sunday and far from being perfect: a house with red lights and I don't remember how I got there. And mirrors everywhere. Pale faces with dark eyes, smudged make-up and skinny limbs were blinking at me. Confused. Why they were all staring at me confused? Was I not to their liking? Was I too much of a mess to be picked up, repaired, dressed and maybe held?
So I ran outside. I ran barefooted and didn't care to look back. I felt like they were all coming back together - all of them, all of them. Dark eyes, blue eyes, powerful bodies holding me in their arms and warmth - it was all coming back to me, trying to get me, to pin me down to the ground and leave me senseless. But I was too strong to give in that easily. And so I ran and ran and ran.
Away.
Rewind.
Saturday. It was the first time I hug the sign on the old door, stealing glances at the man in the corner. It wasn't the first time I was telling to myself that it wasn't like I was lonely or lost my way. It was just turning the page to get a new start, to get a new page to scribble down the same meaning I never got to find...
"I could not tell you my secret."
"I don't know where to go from here."
Saturday. It was the third time I was hanging up the same wooden sign. And soulless eyes would stare to damn me to nothingness.
But I spent an eternity of being a Nobody... their darkness wasn't frightening anymore...
