Saturday 13 November 2010

Chocolate Button Fights

He was a vegetarian (oh I’m sorry let me make that a pescetarian) and she didn’t like vegetables, so her friends could always see that it wasn’t going to work out. Not that they told her that though. It’s not your place to have an opinion in these matters. But it had finally got to the time for her to reluctantly sample some spinach, she was bored of laying the blame for it all on his rock and roll image, the bells were deafening in their ringing for him to make his mind up, whether it was meant to be, for he was the only one in that relationship with the power to write their ending . The master of balls, it was time for him to be coronated. He had to man up. Or make it a “MAN OVERBOARD!” type situation.

He patted her head. He wrote them off. Relieved, he was set free, to go join the rest of those slippery creatures inhabiting the sea.

And with a startled “Oh, I’m sorry, my mistake, I thought we were in love?”
She found herself unwillingly departing, on the journey to the broken hearted.

But let’s skip a station or two. It’s no fun to listen to them go on and on. On and on about how much it hurts, how they would do anything, be anything, anyone, as long as it made them their someone.
Come on baby we can make it work, what do you say?
Because we all know what it feels like, and we all know that no one else ever hurts as much as we do over it, because no one truly truly understands, although we give friends small smiles and hand squeezes to show that their relating nonsense is helping.

So we fast forward to the time when there is someone who always holds her, someone who does everything in their failing, imperfect, mortal power to make her feel bolder. That someone she had been so sure had been him for so long back then, but now realises that was just her imagination’s whim.

They read books on the beach and paddle in the sea, and he pretends to push her in and she gets angry but she smiles anyway, it’s infuriating and a little nauseating. And for supper they eat out of newspapers, watching the sun giving them some alone time at last, and the only other voice is the wind, but they don’t listen to him, he’s just a load of hot air.

In the dark they feel safe and so talk through life plans and lives past, every grievance that has gathered at their head stones; and somehow he manages to take the chip off her shoulder “I promise to always hold her” he’ll say on that best day of their life, reminiscent of the words he whispered now when she had emptied her bucket of baggage onto the sand. And whilst she had shared he had wondered how any of that had ever come to be, because he’d do anything for her, build her a castle and make her queen of his bed, the ruling voice of reason in his head.

Sometimes that will annoy him, and he’ll want to cut her loose. And sometimes she’ll want to make him jealous, so that he can see just how great she is again. But it’s all just chocolate button fights, like who has the right to read the arts section first each Sunday “BUT YOU READ IT FIRST LAST WEEK” “THAT’S BECAUSE I ACTUALLY GET OUT OF BED AND GO BUY THE BLIMMING THING”
None of it means a damn thing.
Empty but strangely entertaining, it’s just a soap opera daily drama for the ears.
And after everything they will still be having scrambled egg mornings together in seventy years.

x

1 comment:

  1. "And for supper they eat out of newspapers, watching the sun giving them some alone time at last, and the only other voice is the wind, but they don’t listen to him, he’s just a load of hot air."

    i really liked that bit, it's sweet :) xo

    ReplyDelete