Cobra Spit
About the second or third night after you told me you didn't want to see me any more
and stopped returning my calls
I walked into a bar I'd never been in before
and ran into a girl (who wasn't you)
who looked at me twice.
No one had looked at me twice in the longest time
least of all you
so after some small talk
and a few drinks
I invited her home to my new and unfamiliar bedsit
and she said no
let's go to mine
I just bought a new bed.
She was nothing like you
being smaller and less pretty
but something about the way her dark eyes peered at me
from beneath the bleached strands of her fringe
reminded me of the way you used to look at me when you thought I didn't know
and it really got to me -
As though I was unexplored territory and she had a flag all unfurled and ready to plant
and I realised that life hadn't got at her yet
hadn't begun to grind her down or crush her.
When we got to her place she searched in her bag for her key
until I kissed her
and then she kissed me back
very gently.
We stayed that way for a while till we were both a little short of breath
and I took the key from her and opened the door.
Inside we were less reserved
and within thirty seconds we were more or less completely undressed
and laughing in each others arms.
When I slid her jeans from her legs I found a tattoo of a cobra winding round her thigh
so high no one could have seen it ordinarily
head rearing over her belly
poised and ready to strike at her sex.
I kissed the cobra
kissed her mouth
and then her legs closed tightly around my hips
and with her heels
she pulled me to her.
And then I froze.
I could feel the cobra moving between my skin and that of the girl-who-wasn't-you
and as it raised it's head and inspected me I wanted to shut my eyes
but I couldn't.
And I could see now that it wasn't a King Cobra as I had first imagined
but a Spitting Cobra
which had me firmly in it's sights.
Only instead of spitting into my eyes
it was drawing something out of them
something milky and translucent and poisonous and sticky
which had been there a long time without my knowing it
stopping me from seeing clearly.
Which was exactly when I realised that this time you really meant it
that this was not one of your 'Needing Space' separations.
Not one of the times when you had better things to do than me
or been distracted by a more interesting guy than me
or become embarrassed by the difference in our ages.
This was no meltdown
you'd simply had enough
and you were gone for good.
Back in the here and now
I found I was lying very still in the arms of a girl I'd only just met
and who'd been generous enough to invite me home with her.
She too was lying still.
On her new bed.
Beneath me.
Wrapped around me.
And terribly
terribly
still.
I focused my eyes and looked
into those of the girl whose bed I lay in
no more than a hands width away from my own
and she asked
very softly
if I was alright.
I swallowed hard and said I thought I was.
And then I asked her the same question
and she nodded without speaking
but her lips were pursed
and I said I was sorry
and she nodded again.
After the shimmering silence which followed
she said she thought it might be best if I went home
and now it was my turn to nod without speaking
and I began the long search in darkness and unfamiliar surroundings
for my clothes.
Outside my door when I got home was a black bin bag
containing the last of my things from your flat.
Balanced on top was my battered old copy of Solaris
and the poems and stories I'd written for you.
And I realised that everything I thought I knew was gone
and that I could never go back to my comfy limited version of the world
or my place in it.
I went into my new kitchen
and I sat at my new table
and I wondered what you were going to do
and I wondered what the-girl-who-wasn't-you was going to do
but most of all I wondered what I was going to do.
Through my window
a flash of blue neon from a passing emergency vehicle
on it's way to save someone who wasn't me
punctuated the night sky.
And I sat and waited for it to be morning so I could go to work.
And sat. And waited.
And sit. And wait.
*