Title: Jealous of...

Author: Amy B.

Rating: too short for such nonsense

c. October 2001

Summary: A short, *short* piece wherein I sort of rip off Hawksley Workman a few times and refuse to feel too bad about it until the fever breaks or the medication wears off. At which time, I'll probably just be vaguely embarrassed. So uh...sorry, Hawksley, wherever you are. I'm sure you're having more fun than I am.

-------

I'm jealous of your cigarette. The way you take it between your lips and just let it linger there. You suck on it like it'll save your life instead of slowly kill you. You cradle it in the softest breeze--so protective of that precious fire. I want your tongue to taste me that way. I want you to inhale me like that, but you don't. Won't. Can't. But smoke pours out your mouth and I pant for more.

I'm jealous of your hands. Your long slim fingers so elegant and deft. Those are hands that should play the piano, compose symphonies, rewrite history, perform life-saving surgeries of the most delicate sort. But that's not where your brain is at...

I'm jealous of your beauty. No, not your face. Deeper than skin, or even bone structure. It's that willful blindness to the ugliness of the world around you. You only notice the hearts and flowers and butterflies. The hate and garbage and buzzards are for other people to deal with. You just wave it off and go back to singing and dreaming.

I'm jealous of your self-absorption. The world can't hurt you because you never take notice of it. Your little tragedies are all consuming and isn't that some kind of gift? Twisted and dirty, and maybe a gift you should return. Self-protection has a high price, but still...you very rarely hurt.

I'm jealous of the way you move. Forward momentum and nothing lost. No motion clumsy or misguided. Each move calculated with enough precision to make a five-star general blush. And yet graceful as any dancer who practiced until their feet bled then practiced some more.

I'm jealous of the discordant poetry in your soul, the fractured way you look at the simplest things, picking out details and colors that barely exist. I want it for my own, instead of this bland linear pragmatism. I would guard it carefully and savor the taste of it, but no. You give it away freely to anyone who'll listen. No one gets it, but you give it anyway.

I'm jealous of the way can talk no sense and people will still nod and smile and find you enchanting. It never occurs to them that maybe you're just an idiot in intellectual's clothing. Or that you slipped the chains of this world a long time ago and no one has noticed yet. If they do, they'll lock you up in the irons of reality like the rest of us, and it's goodbye fairytales and moonbeams.

I'm jealous of your freedom even as I hope desperately that you never lose it. Your beauty must be rubbing off on me.

But mostly I'm jealous of your cigarette, and all the things you do with it.

The end.

Back to Original Fiction