rmislam
10-22-2012, 02:54 PM
My favorite weather is overcast. Nothing is more perfect than an ominous layer of gray clouds hovering above the city, and though some say it’s depressing, I think not. This is the type of weather where I’m most comfortable.
People are ants here. Forty-four stories down, clumps of shoppers walking too fast make their way from store to store. A deep breath, and cool air fills me. In the atmosphere, there’s a gentle, encompassing coldness that makes my hands turn white but insulates me from others. I look down.
I am on my perch. The highest roof in the city, the roof of my apartment building.
The city, the port city. It’s infused with a flow of ideas, but I don’t ever seem to get a share of that. That’s entirely my fault, though. I refuse to take part of that down there. I’m not going to be another mindless shopper, another cog in the machine. Maybe I’d be happier if I was one of them, but I could never stoop that low. I’m an individual. Even this far away, that’s a characteristic about me that I’ll never surrender.
Far? Distance is relative. After all, I should consider here to be my home now. My family and my old friends told me what a fool I was for choosing to move overseas. We had high hopes for you, my dad would say. I thought you wanted to study medicine, he’d argue, why go to some foreign nation to waste your life away? Well yes, I thought I wanted to study medicine. But I thought again. I’m not willing to devote my life to a career that I may find myself miserable in later. I’m young, I have places to go, people to meet, people to be. On the other hand, my friends thought I was ditching them. They said they may never see me again. And maybe they’re right. I’ve found new friends. The only difference is that these new ones are real ones.
It’s been four years since I moved here. That’s four years of watching my apartment slowly get dirtier, four years of watching letters and numbers scroll down the screen at my job, and four years of standing on this rooftop whenever I question my decisions. Down on the ground, I can see the street lights coming on now. A small breeze is picking up, but I don’t feel the need to shiver.
Each day that I stand up here and look over the edge, I feel the urge to jump. I’m an outsider in this country. I’m aware of that. I believe my life here is better than it’s ever been, but I know I can never fully assimilate. Looking down at the storefronts on the other side of the street, I see flurry of black coats and black hats. I can’t join those “normal” citizens in spirit, but I can join them physically. Right on the sidewalk next to them, in liquid form. I’d never actually do it, though. I enjoy life just enough to be able to think about suicide without seriously considering it.
Suddenly my throat is warm. Something soft is wrapped around it, with a firm yet familiar hold. I pull my hands out of my pockets to wrap my fingers around her arms. Even under the fabric of my gloves, my hands can sense her fragile skin under her sleeves. She whispers something into my ear, and I watch my breath freeze before me as I laugh. I look back and see the lone door propped open. She’d snuck behind me while I’d been lost in my thoughts and staring at the street.
This girl is the reason I don’t jump. The warmth of her skin is restoring the color to my white hands.
No one back across the ocean knows I’ve been seeing her. No one there even knows her. Exactly how I want it. In theory, there’s no reason why relationships should be any less mundane and repetitive than my desk job or my walks around the city or my meals at the same three restaurants. I’m with the same person every day, doing similar tasks every day, going to similar places every day. Except there’s one crucial thing.
We don’t talk about the same things every day.
I’ve only ever had one conversation with her. It just hasn’t ended yet. We put that conversation on hold when we go to our separate jobs, when we see our friends, when we go to sleep. But the next time, we pick up where we left off. One continuous narrative, a single thought. She’s the only person who I’ll never get tired of talking to. She saves me from the inescapable boredom that is my life.
Am I a hypocrite? Am I wrong to be so stupidly at peace with her next to me? I can’t even say why she’s so special, after all. If I’d never moved abroad, I probably would’ve found some other girl and said these same things I’m saying now. I would’ve believed she was as unique as this girl on the roof with me now, and I would’ve held her as tightly. Or maybe even if I moved abroad, I would’ve found a different girl anyway. If I had a different apartment, a different job, a different path I take to work—who knows how the parameters could change? No matter how hard I try to rationalize, no matter how hard I try to theorize, I simply can’t explain why I find her brunette hair and dark eyes so uniquely brilliant.
Now she’s pulling something out of the pocket of her coat. It’s a single bottle of cherry cola. Cold, just from the vending machine. She hands it to me with a smile that’s beautiful in its simple genuineness. She knows this particular soda is my favorite, and she knows how our friends chastise me for always having cold drinks in such frigid weather. This is her silent protest against them. To her, my happiness is even more important than my health.
I take the bottle from her hand, wet with condensation. I can’t believe she did that for me. She went out of her way to stop by a machine to use her own money to get me my favorite drink. That wonderful smile killed me. But worst of all, she didn’t even get a soda for herself. It’s not as if she was thirsty and wanted a soda, and so she figured she might as well get me one, too.
No. The only reason she went to that vending machine was me.
She knows what I’m thinking. She places her hands around my ears and leans her head forward. I’m glad I hadn’t opened the bottle and taken a drink yet because I didn’t want her tasting the gross carbonated sugar water after it’d been swimming in my mouth. Her lips are warm, even warmer than her arms. Who else but her could pay such close attention to details? Who else would go so out of their way for someone as worthless as me? I’m not asking for someone to fulfill my every wish and save me from every predicament. That stuff is too simple, too easy. It’s easy to shower your loved one with grandiose displays of affection. It’s easy to think of ways to surprise them with flashy gifts or even flashy actions. I don’t need her to plan a surprise flight to some exotic destination for me. It’s much more difficult to express love in small, detailed ways. I want someone who remembers me even when they pass by a vending machine. Someone who remembers that I love cherry cola, but hate cherry vanilla cola.
She is that someone.
She pulls her lips away and wraps her arms around me again. My day is complete. She’s the lone thread that connects me to this world, not just to this foreign country where I’m still a stranger, but yes, to this whole world.
By now the sky is dark and the clouds are damp. The air’s become still, and I can see her breath leaving frosty shadows. We walk back toward the door and reach the elevator—it’s getting late, and I should go to sleep.
I have work in the morning.
People are ants here. Forty-four stories down, clumps of shoppers walking too fast make their way from store to store. A deep breath, and cool air fills me. In the atmosphere, there’s a gentle, encompassing coldness that makes my hands turn white but insulates me from others. I look down.
I am on my perch. The highest roof in the city, the roof of my apartment building.
The city, the port city. It’s infused with a flow of ideas, but I don’t ever seem to get a share of that. That’s entirely my fault, though. I refuse to take part of that down there. I’m not going to be another mindless shopper, another cog in the machine. Maybe I’d be happier if I was one of them, but I could never stoop that low. I’m an individual. Even this far away, that’s a characteristic about me that I’ll never surrender.
Far? Distance is relative. After all, I should consider here to be my home now. My family and my old friends told me what a fool I was for choosing to move overseas. We had high hopes for you, my dad would say. I thought you wanted to study medicine, he’d argue, why go to some foreign nation to waste your life away? Well yes, I thought I wanted to study medicine. But I thought again. I’m not willing to devote my life to a career that I may find myself miserable in later. I’m young, I have places to go, people to meet, people to be. On the other hand, my friends thought I was ditching them. They said they may never see me again. And maybe they’re right. I’ve found new friends. The only difference is that these new ones are real ones.
It’s been four years since I moved here. That’s four years of watching my apartment slowly get dirtier, four years of watching letters and numbers scroll down the screen at my job, and four years of standing on this rooftop whenever I question my decisions. Down on the ground, I can see the street lights coming on now. A small breeze is picking up, but I don’t feel the need to shiver.
Each day that I stand up here and look over the edge, I feel the urge to jump. I’m an outsider in this country. I’m aware of that. I believe my life here is better than it’s ever been, but I know I can never fully assimilate. Looking down at the storefronts on the other side of the street, I see flurry of black coats and black hats. I can’t join those “normal” citizens in spirit, but I can join them physically. Right on the sidewalk next to them, in liquid form. I’d never actually do it, though. I enjoy life just enough to be able to think about suicide without seriously considering it.
Suddenly my throat is warm. Something soft is wrapped around it, with a firm yet familiar hold. I pull my hands out of my pockets to wrap my fingers around her arms. Even under the fabric of my gloves, my hands can sense her fragile skin under her sleeves. She whispers something into my ear, and I watch my breath freeze before me as I laugh. I look back and see the lone door propped open. She’d snuck behind me while I’d been lost in my thoughts and staring at the street.
This girl is the reason I don’t jump. The warmth of her skin is restoring the color to my white hands.
No one back across the ocean knows I’ve been seeing her. No one there even knows her. Exactly how I want it. In theory, there’s no reason why relationships should be any less mundane and repetitive than my desk job or my walks around the city or my meals at the same three restaurants. I’m with the same person every day, doing similar tasks every day, going to similar places every day. Except there’s one crucial thing.
We don’t talk about the same things every day.
I’ve only ever had one conversation with her. It just hasn’t ended yet. We put that conversation on hold when we go to our separate jobs, when we see our friends, when we go to sleep. But the next time, we pick up where we left off. One continuous narrative, a single thought. She’s the only person who I’ll never get tired of talking to. She saves me from the inescapable boredom that is my life.
Am I a hypocrite? Am I wrong to be so stupidly at peace with her next to me? I can’t even say why she’s so special, after all. If I’d never moved abroad, I probably would’ve found some other girl and said these same things I’m saying now. I would’ve believed she was as unique as this girl on the roof with me now, and I would’ve held her as tightly. Or maybe even if I moved abroad, I would’ve found a different girl anyway. If I had a different apartment, a different job, a different path I take to work—who knows how the parameters could change? No matter how hard I try to rationalize, no matter how hard I try to theorize, I simply can’t explain why I find her brunette hair and dark eyes so uniquely brilliant.
Now she’s pulling something out of the pocket of her coat. It’s a single bottle of cherry cola. Cold, just from the vending machine. She hands it to me with a smile that’s beautiful in its simple genuineness. She knows this particular soda is my favorite, and she knows how our friends chastise me for always having cold drinks in such frigid weather. This is her silent protest against them. To her, my happiness is even more important than my health.
I take the bottle from her hand, wet with condensation. I can’t believe she did that for me. She went out of her way to stop by a machine to use her own money to get me my favorite drink. That wonderful smile killed me. But worst of all, she didn’t even get a soda for herself. It’s not as if she was thirsty and wanted a soda, and so she figured she might as well get me one, too.
No. The only reason she went to that vending machine was me.
She knows what I’m thinking. She places her hands around my ears and leans her head forward. I’m glad I hadn’t opened the bottle and taken a drink yet because I didn’t want her tasting the gross carbonated sugar water after it’d been swimming in my mouth. Her lips are warm, even warmer than her arms. Who else but her could pay such close attention to details? Who else would go so out of their way for someone as worthless as me? I’m not asking for someone to fulfill my every wish and save me from every predicament. That stuff is too simple, too easy. It’s easy to shower your loved one with grandiose displays of affection. It’s easy to think of ways to surprise them with flashy gifts or even flashy actions. I don’t need her to plan a surprise flight to some exotic destination for me. It’s much more difficult to express love in small, detailed ways. I want someone who remembers me even when they pass by a vending machine. Someone who remembers that I love cherry cola, but hate cherry vanilla cola.
She is that someone.
She pulls her lips away and wraps her arms around me again. My day is complete. She’s the lone thread that connects me to this world, not just to this foreign country where I’m still a stranger, but yes, to this whole world.
By now the sky is dark and the clouds are damp. The air’s become still, and I can see her breath leaving frosty shadows. We walk back toward the door and reach the elevator—it’s getting late, and I should go to sleep.
I have work in the morning.