Sometimes I wish you could see what I see. Through my eyes, as though the look ahead was mine, perhaps with the dark rims of my glasses, perhaps with gratitude through the soft invisible lenses that cover my eyes. Walking around yesterday I found that sometimes I just don't know how to use words to describe things.

I ride the tube and stare in wonder at everyone around me. A tiny wizened Korean man sits next to me, two plastic grocery bags get parked at his feet. He pulls out his eyeglasses and places them over ears that sit beneath hair so white it's nearly blond. He smiles and bows half-politely to me, and then opens his Korean paper. I smile back and try to see what's in the bags, I try to imagine what he's making for dinner. A woman sits next to me in a heavy fur coat and too-pink lipstick and I curl my lip in distaste. I hate that her fur-encased arm drips on my side of the armrest, and I cough and make pointed looks at it but she's far too important to notice someone like me. I wish someone with more guts than I have would spray paint her jacket, I wish people would convince her the coat is wrong, I wish she wasn't sat next to me. A tall black man sits opposite me and his skin is the most beautiful rich mocha color I've ever seen. I stare at his forearm and marvel at the incredible color of it.

Sometimes I wish you could see what I see.

I walk around a suburb in North London, sycamore leaves now dried up and gone. The traffic sounds are muffled and the wind blows through threadbare trees. The sound of my feet on the sidewalk is the loudest sound imaginable, the only sound imaginable. When I sit on that couch opposite him, his thoughts and opinions are given in a somber baritone. His laugh is a quiet one, a whisper. I hear the words I say and wish I wasn't so broken, I wish I wasn't so hard. When he talks to me sometimes his voice is full of an undercurrent of tenderness and kindness, and sometimes I have to turn my head away and try to handle it. I'm not used to tenderness and kindness. It can hurt too much to bear.

Sometimes I wish you could hear what I hear.

I go to the office and listen to my voice mails, try to read some of the now 1300 plus emails I have. With the exception of my Statia-mails, often I am exhausted just by the very content of the mails let alone the sheer number of them. I walk into the bathroom and look into the mirror, ignoring the work posters on the walls, the smell of work hand soap and work paper towels. I lean over the plastic-feeling countertop and soak up the fluorescent lights. I look into the mirror at the deep moons beneath my eyes. I have freckles splashed across my face, and they disappear into the dark folds of exhaustion. My cheekbones looks harsh, my eyes look lost, and in the space of a minute I have aged a hundred years.

Sometimes I wish you could see what I see.

I go to lunch with my Australian friend, and she vents to me about her troubles as we walk down the lanes at Covent Garden. It's so relaxing to have a friend that I can listen to. I am not good at people, I lose people and they lose me, but it's so amazing to have someone to talk to, someone to talk to me. I am working on this, this ability to have friends, to keep friends. I am working on this and as lunch rolls on, I realize I have begun to enjoy this feeling of having people in my life.

Sometimes I wish you could feel what I feel.

I go to Starbucks and get a cup of café mocha to keep me company as I walk through Covent Garden again to head home. I never drink coffee my hot, I hold on to it until it's just hotter than room temperature. Then I swirl it around in my cup, making sure the skim milk has sifted all the way down and the chocolate all the way up. I move the cup to my lips and as the music from the street singers floats around my head and takes over my senses I drink the coffee silently and fully, allowing each sip to sit in my mouth for a second before swallowing.

Sometimes I wish you could taste what I taste.

I walk across Waterloo bridge and the wind ignites me with cold. The sun is lowering over the cloudy gray sky and Parliament and Big Ben light up my right hand side with gold. Across the bank bright blue fairy lights are strung around every tree and they make me feel lighter as I walk. Tourists stop and take photos from the bridge and I am reminded, every single time I walk across that bridge, how lucky I am to have that view. I never take it for granted and never will. I walk under the Waterloo Bridge, painted with the words to a poem across the walls. Remarkably the poem is never vandalized, and I read it every time I walk under it and marvel at the beauty of it.

Sometimes I wish you could see what I see.

And when I come home, I open the door and take off my shoes. I pet my cats and I love my man and I can't believe I tripped and fell into this life. I worry I will fuck it up, I will lose it, and if I do I will miss it for the rest of my life.

Sometimes I wish you could see my life the way I do, but all I can rely on are my words that I put here, so that we both can pretend that you were here, too.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 07:34 AM | Comments (20) | Add Comment
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