Ghost Town

We need that love - the ghostly one that could never last but remains lodged deep inside of whatever we are like an angry fish-hook dug iinto the skin. You see that person, as perfect as the best dream you could remember, walking away. Somehow they are always silhouetted by a sunset and in the memory you wish to yourself that you could have seen then what you see now - that they are walking away and that day, the special day that makes you believe in fairy tales and leaves you on all fours like a rabid animal just craving more - that day will most likely be your last. But everything was perfect. The laughter, the dinner, even the sex - it was like some kind of manifestation of a childhood wish that was completely induced by the thought of knights in shining armor and fair ladies with their hair all a mess because they ran screaming from the beastly dragon. And the sun set behind them.

You let it in - all of it - the weather, the music, the rhythm, the scent of their skin left tickling your own. It unfolds itself throughout you - taking on your blood. Your heart beats for that one day, the one person - the moment that takes whatever tiny morsel was left of your innocence and chews it up to shit it out. It’s a fantastic thing - that love you wanted but knew you would never have. It instantly takes down your walls, comes inside to play and leaves you crawling for a door you may never find again. Then it runs away, taking whatever sense of self you had. Then, to great chagrin, you realize you are less than you were - which is really saying something because chances are you didn’t know what you wanted or where you were or even how you got there; so really you had no possible way of knowing who you were.

But it takes that precious glass bead you kept on a string in your pocket and it crushes it to bits. Like a junkie heel coming down on a red and blue artery. You watch it break and you fumble on the floor for that bit of crazy glue you lost behind the coach months ago. Just like the love you know you will never find it, but you are praying to whatever God there is that you can be the hero here. Busted, again. Didn’t your parents ever tell you that fairy tales are just made up stories invented to fill an empty reality?

Somehow that love, brutal and shockingly all-knowing, holds onto you. That is why you need it. So when you find the person you know is safe - the one that is nice to look at, sweet to touch, and great for a night when you don’t want to say anything at all - when you find them you have something to turn back to. It’s not that you are wishing for it, persay. Not at all. You are remembering the touch and the laughter and that temporary moment of complete insanity that became your first REAL love. Then you remember the fall and realize that that kind of crazy roller coaster ride could have never lasted even if you weren’t the one standing on the side of a deserted street with your thumb in the air and crazy glue, found two years too late, jammed in your back pocket while you wait for the next ride to come around the corner. It couldn’t have lasted because if it did you wouldn’t have that still memory of that gorgeous creature (perfect, ahhh yes) silhouetted by the setting sun. Suddenly they wouldn’t perfect, and we need that ideal. We need that beautiful break down to build us up and make us realize that sometimes we need exactly what we have and when we need it bad enough to want it we then see that it is exactly what was designed to fit in the first place.