Lauren Housego 'Persistence of Longing
night-stands, the flitting and sliding in and out of friendship groups. I remember you came home once, pissed out of your mind with wine (it was cider in my day), carrot-studded vomit splashed over your blouse, peeling some unworthy boy off your chest. I carried you into the bath like a baby and hosed you down like an animal, not understanding why you'd do that to yourself. I was a teenager once: alone with too many thoughts to express, just wanting to forget it all, but never this, never such abjection. “You make me feel like shit,” you said once, spitting the words out of your pretty, pouty lips – so much like your grandma's. “You treat me like it, too” I nearly said, but didn't. Sometimes I think it's all we've got: to fight our corner; to lick our wounds; to hold on to the hurts as if we wouldn't know who we were without them. But we stand still, observing, waiting; you – strong, womanly, but oddly weak. And me? I'm not sure what to do. Should I hug you, kiss you, tell you I love you? You'd only laugh. But now you slink in to where
I'm sitting - doing, making, thinking, busy, busy, busy - and you put your arms round my neck like a lounging cat in the pretense of familiarity. This is how you want things to be, isn't it? Relaxed, close, natural: the way they haven't been for a long time. And I? Well, what can I say? I don't have keep an eye to make sure you'll stay close anymore. You're choosing me. Perhaps if I hadn't clung, you would have held me much sooner. The pretense melts and we're one again – other, different, but whole. Me and you, you and I: facing forwards out into the big wide world. Not the world of fairytale castles and beaming curlycupid children, but the real world, where you might forget my birthday and I may forget to give hugs. A bruise goes through many colours before it heals. We’ve started something, picked up what we'd left for dead, and we're here now, here, in today. For the first time since you were small, I see love in your eyes.
9
Creativity