It’s funny how we were just standing there, spotlight under fluorescent lighting. The reflective marble floors were practically throwing our shit back up at us. We were really just skeletons. Mine had a ponytail and a nametag, yours carried an earpiece, but it was mostly just bone. A grim sight.
There are certain people in life who have just had the skin ripped off of them, and usually it happens at a young age. Most people see our skins, but we learn to recognize each other by our skeletons. It’s kind of fucked up, isn’t it? The way that we attract each other’s broken parts, and hope that we might finally be seen, only to end up cutting each other with those same sharp edges. And damn those sharp edges, because they mean that we hardly let anyone in, or when we do, it’s just entirely the wrong people. They’re a defense, and yet they harm us.
I call this familiar plot the human condition. It looks slightly different for each of us, but it’s always messy in one way or another. The skeleton people get me every damn time. It’s because I see their broken parts, but that skeletal structure lets me see right into their heart of hearts. The reason I can’t get mad, is because I count the beats and see that we’re the same. I’m mad they did it but I know why they did it. It’s so confusing when they expel rage, but when I put my ear to their chest, I can hear the ocean. Mine does the same thing…
I saw yours clear as day under that fluorescent lighting that illuminated the fatigued night shift. The housekeepers sprayed and wiped the windows with frayed towels. A man in greased shoes and a Fitbit walks into the lounge. And there we were, spilling out our insides to each other, when all along we didn’t even have to because we already knew. It felt like for the first time I was listened to, believed, and seen. Your skeleton got me through; it both lifted me up and let me down. That devastated me.
As you know, I come from a skeleton, He’s the one that got me into this mess, the one who made me a Halloween creature, although most would never know it. Unless you are one. He is the reason I cringed when I wrote the words “spilled out our insides to each other” just now, as if closeness is some kind of poison. No one has hurt me like him. Though you and a few other men have made valiant attempts. Yet, I cannot be mad, because when I look at him, I see the same thing those marble floors would gleefully throw at me in that polished downtown lobby: We’re the same. I get it.
Now excuse me for a second because I must ask God,
“Is there a way to fall in love with someone who is not a monster?” Sincere question, from a fellow one. Or rather, is there a way to love a monster, and not create another one? It would be kind of like two people who know darkness so well, coming together to try and create light.
For the record, there is light in that regardless. By that, I mean two monsters coming together. I know, I’ve seen it. Unfortunately, it always ends the same way. Could it not? Universe, show me. I know you hold both light and darkness at the same time, right up close to your chest. I would like to learn how, and I think I can… After all, we are the same.