film for the future

He stumbled in, all pointed inelegance, studied exhaustion. and a fucking terrible haircut. I hadn't slept for over 80 hours, everything was hysterical and hypertense. I was hysterical and hypertense. That's my default setting. He auto-patted the cat, named after a friend of his that I hate, let the sleeping dog named for my pretentiousness lie sprawled. The only pet in the house he paid any attention to was me. Me, the picture of modern youth. The television played static, the dog muttered in tune. As a dry hand pulled at back of my neck, I demanded to know why his hair was such a fucking disaster.

I'm such a comedian. In an hour he'll be clean shaved, in a week the hair will be better. And it hurts, violently, the way things don't matter, won't matter. The way things are changing without us noticing. The way I'm changing.

A year ago, I wrote him dialogues so that we could avoid arguments and be a cliched disaster couple. A year ago, I left and the words went with me. I've been telling everyone, in my loudest voice, about how I don't write reams and reams of words anymore. If you want a cut to the core in a literary form, you'd be better talking to Stephanie Meyer. I told everyone, over and over, that it was because I got scared, I got fear, I got it all wrong and I got it all bad.

Here, hurting all over with sleeplessness, cat scratches and the sight of someone I missed, I'm left wondering if maybe all that happened was that I found a new way to turn the words, so that they weren't a weapon, they were an ally. But looking at his fucking stupid haircut, and hearing white noise instead of his garbled attempts at being one of the intelligensia, I'm hurting for something old, wishing for something new.