Superhero colours

Everybody here knows how to cry
Except for the superheroes we know
Johnson Tang



Red and blue zigzag lines heaped on the table- superhero colours. This backdrop is my backdrop, nothing more than canvass. This is canvass that can be drawn on, painted over, remoulded, torn up and thrown over one’s shoulder.

I wasn’t always blank. There was a time when I had darkly etched lines that ran from extremity to extremity. That was a time I traced over the pictures men drew, a time when cupid pierced two hearts with his arrow and you could see the arrow that joined them. But now, as soon as it touches me, I sever the arrow.

I do not want to be complicated.
I do not want arrows.
I do not want another’s heart.
Worst of all, I do not want my own.

Red and blue images flash across my expensive plasma screen. I curl up on my black leather couch and sink into the sultry smell. I watch Superman watch other peoples’ tears. I watch him watch his tears drown him from the inside. I watch him watch his reflection become
cold-
warm-
hard-
soft-
himself.

He does not know salty waters. He will never know emptiness. He will never know sadness that goes so deep it simply can not be reached. He will never know the darkness that can nurture the darkest moulds. He can never know how it feels to stand face to face with this crazy world. And we save the best for last; he can not know the pure liberation in finding tears.

Superheroes can not cry,
we can.
Superheroes can not cry
and I will not.



To know I was beautiful in his eyes made me beautiful.
I had never been beautiful before.
Janet Fitch



I watch the rumours climb over these four walls, the mile high walls. I see the raised eyebrows and the half-smiles from everyone else around. They apparently see everything I can not because I can only find the foot long ladder.

There is a saying, that you should be silent, let people hurl themselves into destiny and be prepared to pick up the pieces after. We have spent some time picking up the pieces, yours and mine, both. And I wonder why it is not enough to pick up the pieces.

These broken pieces of mine can be glued together, but not by you. You may watch, with everyone else while the soft pink tissue heals over. And if you can watch, then I’ll let you inside me, where I know you want to be- where I want you to be.

It is more than lust, but not even close to love. What I want can not be put into words. It is far from feeling any sense of completion, and more about corruption. I would take no one else to my bed. I would have no other. But I need a man; I need you, to define me as beautiful.

I don’t want to hear half-truths. I want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if you will not give me that, then you had better give me a decent god damn lie.



The night is for hunting
John Marsden



I watched each one of us cram into the city rail train carriage. It was a cold, crisp morning compared to the other mornings of that week. And the girls and boys lined against the wall, having perfected the art of standing during train rides. And I see a girl, a girl I know, turn and bury her head on his shoulder. And she doesn’t move, that is how I know she is crying.

She had her face to the wall, her gentle locks of hair fell by her shoulder, covering whatever shudders she could not suppress. Past three stations, she lifts her head and rearranges herself, locking her arms around his neck, a perfect fit. I see the slow hot streaks and that redness that lets everyone know that today, she is broken. I see the raised eye-brows across the carriage and the way we whisper about broken people. And there is a part of me that pities how she bares herself, and the other part wishes you knew I am broken too.

I wish I could start over, bleach the stains on my skin white, bleach over the canvass. But since I can not turn the clock’s hands backwards, I am willing to compromise. If I can not change what I have, I can change what will be.

I can steal back tears, affection- I can steal you back.

Do not dare to think you know me. I know more than the rules of calculus, I know more than the unspoken rules of friendship and I know I read you better than you know.

I know a smell that drives me and you murderous, that faint, sweaty, after-sex scent. I know the way you love body butter running down my body. I know how when you hear water running down onto your aqua tiles, you wait just beyond the shower screen. I never see your outline but you always wait. I pull the blue and red towel, patterned with trains, and wrap it around me. I can read desire in your mahogany eyes. I feel the urgency in the way your hands pull on the towel. And to think- we have not even fucked.

This is desire-
This is what I hunt for.



Just take my hands and fly away
Brown Boy



You should know I take a perverse joy in being cryptic, in making you layer all the pieces of me that you have accumulated over the months, years to really find me. You do not deserve to have it easy. You do not deserve to know how burnt or broken I have become.

I do not know when you thought you could be my superman. You gestured with open arms, that I should take your hand so we could leave behind nothing but dust and memories.

I have this memory of us, which would be the memory I would leave behind it. I had my head slumped on your shoulder and you laid gentle kisses on my head while we waited for a train. I stole your hand and enclosed them with my own, making up my own childish games. I could hear your smile just above my head and when I turned slightly, there it was- that half smile you wear only for me. And when I let your hands go, they wrapped themselves around my arms, stealing my fingers back.

No one can love me the way you can.
No one can love me the way a superhero can.
But if you can not make me cry, you can never be my superman.