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Waves
by
Adriana Mosoiu
I killed her.
I did. Never claimed the opposite. I knew they’d
search for me, I also knew they’d eventually find
me. Still, I don’t regret it. What’s regretting,
anyway? Just small lint in your eye, and you try to
get rid of it.
Nope. I loved her till the end, till I had to make
a choice. Our love was a deadly virus. It
suffocated me, so I had to do something, I felt I
couldn’t resist anymore. Me? Or her? Someone had to
step out of this game, we were walking a one way
street and I had enough of collisions. We used to
be like two magnets drawing each other, now we
couldn’t even see each other’s face. I couldn’t
even stand the thought of her being closer than 100
miles. The feelings were mutual. In the beginning I
was happy, thought she wasn’t afraid of me, afraid
of her feelings for me. I thought I meant something
to her. Stupid me, I was completely out of my mind.
She never loved me, it was all just a war movie by
the end of which the actors stand up from the
trenches, remove the dust and go their ways.
Her hands never caressed my hair, my hands never
touched her cheek, her belly, her knees. Her ankles
have never been the first things I saw in the
morning;
night was just a biological need. I loved her. And
everything was just an illusion. We were the
rabbits in the magician’s hat. The sets.
I managed to forget her, for a while. And I felt
free. My lungs stood still in the thorax, my
stomach didn’t give a start when I felt her smell,
nights were compatible with my sleep, and days –
though they weren’t exactly a yellow diamond string
– they made sense. I was free and life was
beautiful.
I was fooling myself. She was still living inside
me, she was in every single fiber, in every single
pore, she was in every single blood cell. It wasn’t
me anymore, I was her, the absence of her. It was
growing inside me and I wasn’t aware, it was a
small wave coming closer. Wave after wave after
wave, until it turned into a tsunami. I opened the
window but this wasn’t the right solution. I don’t
have suicide
skills. Not me, but the waves needed to disappear.
How did I do it? I was gentle to her. Didn’t shoot
her, nor strangle her with the phone wire, I hate
violence. A few grams of inhaled xenure could put
you
to sleep and then send you to the Quiet Zone. I had
her keys, so I entered and before she came in I
sprayed the xenure on her cigarettes. Then I hid
myself on the balcony and waited. After about an
hour, she returned home. I was able to hear her
walking, opening the refrigerator, the radio,
lighting a cigarette, and then I heard the water
flowing in the bathtub.
Oh, how I missed her! How badly did I want to kiss
her wet skin, to lean my head on her shoulder, to
kiss her teeth and her ribs and her ankles… What
for? It wouldn’t be the same anyway, we couldn’t be
Al Bano and Romina Power anymore, each of us was
separated from the other, each of us was lonely
lonely lonely lonely.
After a while she turned off the lights and I
couldn’t hear her anymore. I supposed she fell
asleep, generally xenure works quickly. She was
sleeping and I was so close to her, but I couldn’t
steal her wana anymore… I realized that all this
time I vainly tried to tear her memory off my
brain. I loved her even more.
Thank God I did it. My life was nothing but a piece
of sandpaper, it couldn’t go on like that.
I stepped into the room. She even didn’t get to dry
her hair, she fell asleep on the sofa. I went
closer and sipped the water drops on her hair. It
smelled like shampoo. I passed my heated fingers
over her wet eyebrows. I kissed her neck. She had
no pulse. I panicked when the phone rang, so I said
to myself I should leave. Finally, after all those
struggles and sleepless nights, I was free!
I went home and slept. Don’t know whether I dreamed
or not. They arrested me early in the morning,
there were five armored giants, as if I could
fight, me! I don’t
even have scissors in my house and the knife – only
use it to butter the bread.
They arrested and tried me. The verdict was short
and I expected it: deportation. They sent me to
Shannon, a small island in the Greenland Sea, half
a world away,
to make glaciers. I arrived here a week ago and I
can already say that guillotine is a child’s game
comparing to my work here. We stay all day long in
huge refrigerators, there are three main pools that
collect water and convert it into glaciers. Soon,
those glaciers would join the bigger ones floating
already at sea. Thanks to other poor fellows and me
the inhabitants of Holland and Venice can sleep
safely, in dry beds. We all have frozen arms and
legs, and most of the time we are unconscious,
fainted because of gases. Soon, we’ll be nothing
but crawling stumps.
I still think about her, from time to time. We walk
on the cliff or on the beach, her white scarf
touches my shoulder, we hold each other’s hand and
our feet plunge into the sand. I kiss her and the
water touches my knees, but it’s not the ocean, no,
it’s the frost that bites me like a hungry shark. I
love her and I suffer. I’m cold and suffer. I
suffer cause I love her and I roll into her memory
like a sunny meadow, I feel so good tucked up with
her memory. I know she’s with me, I can feel it.
Sometimes, between the cold gusts, I can feel the shampoo on her wet hair. The more I suffer the closest I feel her. And this pain will purify me. I’ll become a better man for her, I’ll love her even more. And I know we’ll be together till the end of time.
Adriana Mosoiu (b.1974) lives and works in
Constanta, Romania.
Infatuated with art, photography and travelling.
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