Some kind of wonderful.
I met Lee on the subway, tracks to London and back, and he smiled when I only had one suitcase. He had a t-shirt with Bob Dylan on the front, it was a young picture, he looked about 23, and his fingernails were long.
“Jesus Georgia, you’re so thin,” he pulled the suitcase from my hands and opened up the car door. I stepped in, and leant my head against the glass. I had been sick for a long time, not the headaches and the vomiting, but the stillness, and the nausea that is worse because it makes no sense. I hadn’t had a drink since January. I hadn’t seen a doctor because I didn’t want to look at my healthcare and deal with all that shit. I’d probably lost 5kg, 10lbs or whatever the fuck it is. He’d ask me why later, and I would tell him I just wasn’t hungry, and I wasn’t. I didn’t really feel alive.
The Carmen fields are beautiful in March; I trail my fingers over their soft, purple grass heads as I walk. It’s cold, and the wind is sharp, but my sweater is still around my waist.
I spent a year in Paestum, Italy, when I was sixteen. I spent every day in the open fields, just walking, or riding a pushbike. I didn’t even know it was cold most of the time, the wind shot straight off my skin. Whenever I look back on it, I feel as though I was only half there. It’s like watching a film clip where the only sound you can hear is the faint whistling of the wind over empty hills. This was what the sickness felt like; only I wasn’t looking back on anything. It wasn’t a memory because it was still the present. That was the best I could explain it.
I’m leaving London soon, leaving the British Isles, away, away from computer screens and televisions and air-conditioning vents. I get sick of things too quickly. It’s not just that people say I do, it’s because in my head I know I hate things staying the same. And that would be fine if I didn’t want to go away all the time and leave everything behind.
Gender:
Points: 890
Reviews: 19