[lj idol] week one | "in the midnight hour..."
A lot of people miss your dad, you know? he’ll probably add. Like he’s just being nice. Like maybe I’m not one of them. Like there’s no possible way on Earth I’m the one person that misses him the very most…
- - -
I find it right there, hidden inside a stammered inhalation.
Something as ephemeral as air passing lips and teeth and tongue in a way that differs enough, just enough to me, from every other time air passes lips and teeth and tongue.
I hold my own breath in anticipation; my facial muscles preparing themselves without my conscious contribution for the eye-roll that is suddenly inevitable. This scenario, as recognisable to me as the brittle crunch of dry grass beneath my bare toes, of fairy floss between my teeth and pressed to the pads of my sticky fingers.
I fill myself up and then drag in more, more, more, until I'm overflowing on desperate bubbles of bright white familiarity.
A crowd has gathered. There is almost always a crowd these days, a mostly willing audience that tends to hang on every word he scrapes together. Mostly I find them annoying, gathered strangers that ooze rehearsed sentimentality, unwanted pity, shrivelled fruit platters; their motivations, not something I’ve quite managed to fathom.
My fingers tighten into the soft cotton of my well-worn t-shirt. The hem carrying evidence of the afternoon I’ve spend outside on my knees in the dirt, elbowed beneath the overgrown hedge with the neighbour’s mewling kitten. I’m suddenly self-conscious of the stains, even though there’s been no-one paying attention to me, no-one likely to notice.
I notice.
It seems disrespectful and I blink back inexplicable tears and hold my breath and tangle my fingers more completely into the fabric, stretching it out of shape in the same way my own insides barely seem to fit my scratched and torn skin.
And I listen to the way the air passing over his lips and teeth and tongue is different for a beat. My face ready; ready for the eye-rolling and for the barked laughter I’ll have to pretend is forced, embarrassed.
“Har har,” I can already hear myself saying, my lips not moving because they won’t need to as he turns to me and grins, wide and long and loose, the entire charade little more than a choreographed in-joke that isn’t actually a joke at all.
“So funny I forgot to laugh.”
And his head turns then, just like it’s meant to, but it’s different as well, less deliberate, and his chin is rolled towards his chest, his eyelids drooping closed for beats too long, too long, too long.
Count to ten: one, two, three, four-
And I’m still holding my breath.
Because this is not how it goes…
*
- - -
I find it right there, hidden inside a stammered inhalation.
Something as ephemeral as air passing lips and teeth and tongue in a way that differs enough, just enough to me, from every other time air passes lips and teeth and tongue.
I hold my own breath in anticipation; my facial muscles preparing themselves without my conscious contribution for the eye-roll that is suddenly inevitable. This scenario, as recognisable to me as the brittle crunch of dry grass beneath my bare toes, of fairy floss between my teeth and pressed to the pads of my sticky fingers.
I fill myself up and then drag in more, more, more, until I'm overflowing on desperate bubbles of bright white familiarity.
A crowd has gathered. There is almost always a crowd these days, a mostly willing audience that tends to hang on every word he scrapes together. Mostly I find them annoying, gathered strangers that ooze rehearsed sentimentality, unwanted pity, shrivelled fruit platters; their motivations, not something I’ve quite managed to fathom.
My fingers tighten into the soft cotton of my well-worn t-shirt. The hem carrying evidence of the afternoon I’ve spend outside on my knees in the dirt, elbowed beneath the overgrown hedge with the neighbour’s mewling kitten. I’m suddenly self-conscious of the stains, even though there’s been no-one paying attention to me, no-one likely to notice.
I notice.
It seems disrespectful and I blink back inexplicable tears and hold my breath and tangle my fingers more completely into the fabric, stretching it out of shape in the same way my own insides barely seem to fit my scratched and torn skin.
And I listen to the way the air passing over his lips and teeth and tongue is different for a beat. My face ready; ready for the eye-rolling and for the barked laughter I’ll have to pretend is forced, embarrassed.
“Har har,” I can already hear myself saying, my lips not moving because they won’t need to as he turns to me and grins, wide and long and loose, the entire charade little more than a choreographed in-joke that isn’t actually a joke at all.
“So funny I forgot to laugh.”
And his head turns then, just like it’s meant to, but it’s different as well, less deliberate, and his chin is rolled towards his chest, his eyelids drooping closed for beats too long, too long, too long.
Count to ten: one, two, three, four-
And I’m still holding my breath.
Because this is not how it goes…
*