Finale...
It isn't that I'm bitter - it's more just that I'm the fool. A facade of intelligence wrapped in the warmth of brown hair and grey eyes - all turned together in pale skin and body little more than a torso.
Don't you see it, how I've been faking it all this time? You thought I was the sign of honorary society. You thought I was the mark of great thought. You thought these words, this writing actually meant something to the world, and even to myself. But all along, I was doing a great job of feigning the mind to conceive of such things. I was dreaming up fantasies and putting them in words better than myself - so you wouldn't think me so foolish, so daft, so mistakingly mislead.
Yet, I was.
I was confused and turned around - and I kept making the wrong decisions and kept saying the wrong things and kept being the wrong ways and kept winning at the wrong games. It cost me in the end, you know. More than craps at Las Vegas, more than super lotto in Los Angeles, more than losing the best paiting at a high soceity auction somewhere in upscale London. Oh yes, it cost me in the end. And I'd have paid it all off, you see - but I'm still in debt so far that I can't see above the waterline.
I'm drowning.
Drowning under the weight, under the thought, under the memory of all of the things I thought I was - or things I made believe I was going to be, or hopes of things I knew that I thought you'd say I was - if that makes any sense.
And yet, it was so simple. Like writing a paragraph on the macabre when you have no idea what your Poe essay's on about, or painting a field when you don't know what leashes it in, or creating a character that you aren't sure who he'll grow up to be. It's simple to begin without knowing, at first, where you are going.
But somewhere along the way, one would hope you'd figure it out. I never did - not until the very last step, the very last move, the last beat of the song I was supposed to be dancing perfectly to. Then I knew. I knew where my steps were leading, and I saw the finale in my mind. I knew every spin that I ought to make and every place my feet ought to be - and I saw it all in my mind, like a movie of that stunning unity between the music and the movement... .. but I saw it all one beat too late.
Instead, I faultered in the end. I took a step out of time, and the music faded: my skirt stopped twirling, my hair lie still across my bare back and my eyes, painted like leopards, went dim. The lights slowly faded, leaving me engulfed in the darkness of an empty stage, save me - all in the wrong position. When the lights came back up, there was no one watching - no one clapping - no one caring.
I'd done the finale wrong, I'd danced the last step off, and it'd ruined the whole of the thing. It would have been so easy to finish it, to be in the right place at just the right time; To feel my hair grace around my shoulders in the last spin on a stage where eyes were glued for the watching. To know that the gentle kiss of my skirt's hem at my ankles shimmered just so in the light and the shadows danced that perfect duet with my form on the wall - and all of it, being so wholly complete, was done. It would have been so simple, so easy, so perfect -
But it all came one beat too late. And that is the tragedy, the constant pervasive tragedy of the thing I cannot forget and am not allowed to relive.
-RK
Don't you see it, how I've been faking it all this time? You thought I was the sign of honorary society. You thought I was the mark of great thought. You thought these words, this writing actually meant something to the world, and even to myself. But all along, I was doing a great job of feigning the mind to conceive of such things. I was dreaming up fantasies and putting them in words better than myself - so you wouldn't think me so foolish, so daft, so mistakingly mislead.
Yet, I was.
I was confused and turned around - and I kept making the wrong decisions and kept saying the wrong things and kept being the wrong ways and kept winning at the wrong games. It cost me in the end, you know. More than craps at Las Vegas, more than super lotto in Los Angeles, more than losing the best paiting at a high soceity auction somewhere in upscale London. Oh yes, it cost me in the end. And I'd have paid it all off, you see - but I'm still in debt so far that I can't see above the waterline.
I'm drowning.
Drowning under the weight, under the thought, under the memory of all of the things I thought I was - or things I made believe I was going to be, or hopes of things I knew that I thought you'd say I was - if that makes any sense.
And yet, it was so simple. Like writing a paragraph on the macabre when you have no idea what your Poe essay's on about, or painting a field when you don't know what leashes it in, or creating a character that you aren't sure who he'll grow up to be. It's simple to begin without knowing, at first, where you are going.
But somewhere along the way, one would hope you'd figure it out. I never did - not until the very last step, the very last move, the last beat of the song I was supposed to be dancing perfectly to. Then I knew. I knew where my steps were leading, and I saw the finale in my mind. I knew every spin that I ought to make and every place my feet ought to be - and I saw it all in my mind, like a movie of that stunning unity between the music and the movement... .. but I saw it all one beat too late.
Instead, I faultered in the end. I took a step out of time, and the music faded: my skirt stopped twirling, my hair lie still across my bare back and my eyes, painted like leopards, went dim. The lights slowly faded, leaving me engulfed in the darkness of an empty stage, save me - all in the wrong position. When the lights came back up, there was no one watching - no one clapping - no one caring.
I'd done the finale wrong, I'd danced the last step off, and it'd ruined the whole of the thing. It would have been so easy to finish it, to be in the right place at just the right time; To feel my hair grace around my shoulders in the last spin on a stage where eyes were glued for the watching. To know that the gentle kiss of my skirt's hem at my ankles shimmered just so in the light and the shadows danced that perfect duet with my form on the wall - and all of it, being so wholly complete, was done. It would have been so simple, so easy, so perfect -
But it all came one beat too late. And that is the tragedy, the constant pervasive tragedy of the thing I cannot forget and am not allowed to relive.
-RK
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