If I didn’t like it

I love the illustrious shimmer of my words, I prefer them over whatever is written in books. If I didn’t like what I wrote so much I might spend more time mouth agape over others’ literature.

I would respect you if whatever you drew looked any better than a child’s drawings. If you took pride in your youthful whimsy, I could witness your authenticity without the veneer of your desolate encroaching adulthood severed from your past. Desperate for your mirage of maturity, you mock my immaturity.

I adore the art of children, they are so bare of expectation in creation. You feel no judgement when a 12 year old presents you with an image of their favorite anime character in their sketchbook, colored in with thin sharpies and crayola markers. Just blue and red though, they couldn’t find any other colors.

What criticism could you have? They do not have an ego to uphold, no image of themselves through your eyes, thirsty for validation as a weary desert nomad. I perhaps could only dream of a world that may never materialize, where I am not poisoned by what life has done to me, where I dance with ease and grace and have nothing to hold against you. To witness you as I would a child or a tree.

It is simply kidding, it is simply treeing. Being. Bending this way and that, curved, with a branch sticking out extra long there to reach the sun that peeks out behind that building as it sets. With color pencil rainbows and an edgy denim+beanie combo along with a funky stylized Beatle’s lyric adorning the page in yellow lettering next to yourself, proudly posed, hands in pockets and smirking.

I knew you. I felt good. It was nice to know you. It was nice when there weren’t that many people around. There were so many you had to prove yourself to, it was this party and that social obligation, and these parents have known me my whole life, and this friend and I had a falling out but we are still kinda cool. That person fucked me over lets plot to shit on their lawn or… I was keeping track in my head, this whole world living right under my nose.

Of course! It makes sense, that person was upset that this person was dating that guy, because they liked that guy, so if they saw you with them, y’all weren’t gonna be that cool unless you denounced that person for them. There was a litany of these little stories, pieced together as we schmoozed through North Berkeley, parking on the skinniest streets and drinking champagne and IPA’s in expensive homes, mostly lodged by old drunk whites.

I guess it was nice, you had me tag along for support, and I adored you and followed like a pet. We shared commentary about how she interacted with him, how weird it was, this person said such a strange thing to me about my gender, how she knew some of “those people like me” and how interesting they were. Past tense.

I hated being a passing phase here, I hated how you let me go. I hated how temporary you made me feel despite treating me like we’ll be around forever. It was confusing, I was disoriented but your priorities were quite transparent and we were aligned for a bit but I do not live your life nor you mine. This separation we did not handle, attached at the hip as we were in summer.

What a lovely summer, I still feel the newness of nicotine that still I try to escape from. Why did I join in? Peer pressure. I wanted to feel accepted into your group, I remember strange comments made about me like I wasn’t even there. This bizarre occurrence where your friends would describe something I just did or said and use “he” or “men” to describe the group that would do it. Then speak at length of their woes with men, their hatred, disgust, and ultimately lust for them. The same conclusions over and over, unaccepted and reached through vitriol, and for some reason I catalyzed this. I am indescribable, but I figured without me your group did not spend this much time in a negative space, admonishing men and their presence. I felt horrible around you and them, and I wanted to feel accepted. I wanted to be treated better, like a queer I guess. I was treated like a freak, a talking point, an object.

But when push came to shove I was a human, I treated you with love despite all my senses ringing the other direction. How I hated myself, I knew in my bones this was not to be, it didn’t feel right but it felt so good how it was so wrong.

Oh my goodness we are having sex, oh my god your body, I couldn’t imagine this is how you looked under your clothes, I was always too distracted in awe. The hours you spent each morning getting ready, outfit coordination, face wash routine, make up, you put in work and I felt it. The tattoos swallowed your legs and melted on my hips, I saw scaled flesh undulating with the motion you rode me with. You wanted me to feel you, you needed me to. I took you in and went into your walls and reached every end inside of you. I filled your holes up with myself until you screamed, I held you down, tied you up, fucked you red and raw and left us panting, soaked. We shared cigarettes before we fell asleep. The voices of Howl and Nausica filled our ambiance, we fucked to your childhood, we cried and held each other as hard you can embrace another without breaking a rib.

So much stuff, so many things, all this stuff and things. Most of the stuff and things didn’t matter when we just got along, we didn’t do all that much talking. I don’t remember if we shared that many laughs but I remember your smile, your giggles, your exclamations and yelps. There was a part of me that felt like only I knew you this intimately, there was no way someone else could know the face she makes when she is processing something, about to laugh or pass silent judgement.

She desperately wanted me to see her friends again. More traveling as summer came to a close. I put up my boundaries and tried to hold them as you fired your barrage, you needed me to go with you. You wanted me to be there with you.

You would not let me see my other love. My best friend. I am in love with her. We are in love. I have not a single negative thing to say about her. She is ethereal and human, she can do no wrong because I will stand by her in all her lessons as she has mine. You were jealous, and I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, I really wanted to be your friend, to get to know you, it felt so good to be close to you. To be in you. I was mad with infatuation, I don’t know if it was love. But I loved you. I do.

You did not want to be my friend, you wanted me to yourself, you would not accept less. Except when you did, and I fucked another woman, trans, and we shared a laugh. I checked in on an old flame who needed to see me and you asked me to lie to your face. You were okay with the penis girl, but I could not even speak with one of my pussy girls without your scorn. We never recovered from that lie.

I have seen it when I lower my walls, I tried to let you in to how I felt, the way you reduced me to a penis with she/her pronouns tacked on like that was all I was. Your sidekick, a little detour on your fantastical narrative in a tale you weave of make believe joyous friendships. You opened for a minute and all of that anger bubbling just beneath the surface of your expressionless face poured out for a minute and I saw a version of you kept hidden from your best friend. A frustrated girl that yearned to be understood. You held your posture of loving kindness with grace, I was amazed and mortified watching your role as a caretaker and mirror. A good friend taken for granted perhaps, co-dependent, in love?

We didn’t know what to call it, and I made the mistake of engaging with your sulfurous personality with my mercurial agent, met only with a sizzling burn as you turned your frustration to me. There is only so much that can be vented before something would need to be done, but you were o.k. with just letting the love fizzle out. Distracting yourself anyway you could. Perhaps I was no different than a bottle of liquor to you. You did not put your dying friendship out of its misery, smother the fire quickly and kindly, you pretended it was what it started as until you both knew it wasn’t and you were too far apart and too tired pretending to do anything about it.

And you two will grow older and reminisce, perhaps remembering the good more than the bad, or occasionally being struck with some revelation of separation.

“Ah, yes! This was the moment I knew that it was not meant to be!”

“Eureka!”

Emotional gold. Fools gold.

Multimedia jack-off all trades, master of none, sucker of fun, your presence incapacitates any capacities for joy incapable of feeling. Your art is as devoid as your personality, a bad copy cat thinking they’re all that. Simultaneously your body moves detached from your mouth and your thoughts, the only thing you can squeak out is shit.

To objectify you sexually would almost be a compliment, that perhaps there may be some substance for someone to stick himself into. A succubus has ulterior motives and benefits from some sexual power derived from men’s ultimate impotence to her ethereal standards. You do not lie between these ends or reach out and beyond with any post-irony or metaphysical fervor. You stare blankly into space where nothing happens and your life is a mistake. You are a color that does not exist.

Unfortunately, this is what the last of your muse has for me, I initially had so much bright light to share as you crossed my mind and now tears soak my keyboard. The last petty bits of anger barely getting across the page, using vulgarity in the space where I could not break into a frustration now calcified and eroding away with time. I miss you, flower girl.

You were my froggy. I love you dearly.