Collapsed Fragments

shiv

She longs for the medicated hue and visiting-hour nature of a self-imposed cocoon. The cranes outside her window and all over the city are lovely lego architecture against the five-storey backdrop of vulgar prosperity. There is still some moth-eaten beauty to be found in the octagon shape of her room. It wafts in at night with the draft and the sound of traffic and settles in the dust. She sticks her fingers through unexpected holes in her clothes and is strangely content that she has an excuse to throw something else out.

Sometimes he comes and takes her out to lunch. She amuses herself and orders for both of them, telling the waiter it is a form of feminist role reversal. She sits quietly eating her shoestring fries, looking at the lonely piano and the posh patrons reading the newspaper. He takes several calls from the office. A black parade of sports utility vehicles passes by the window of the restaurant like a slow-moving funeral procession on too- narrow, nouveau-riche steets. Four-by-fours modern-day horses for those who want others to know they are somehow socially above the rest. High-time we were high-brow and holier than though, don't you think? An old way of life fading in the face of smoothies, designer buggies and wads of cash. Sometimes she watches the weekend crowds swarm into The Church of Brown Thomas with their Gucci sunglasses. The sound of each credit card transaction a welcome secular version of the Angelus. Every group of over-voweled schoolgirls are a Day-Glo pack of wolves. She avoids them and prefers the hoops, hoodies and coarse tones of their working-class counterparts.

She waits on electronic missives. Calling cards of the twenty-first century. Anything to levitate the ennui. She craves popularity vitamins that reinforce her real-time existence. Her tablets have become the numbers on the kitchen clock. She is afraid of sleeping in on a Saturday in case the timing of the chemical explosion in her blood stream is delayed by a recurring dream.

The spring-time light helps the mental rehabilitation process. She counts on those two extra minutes being added to each day and wants nothing more than to leave work without being swallowed up by the dark and the retro green seats of the DART. Every year she accumulates old tickets, price hikes and strangers' see-through glances. Sometimes she pulls them out of her coat pocket and examines them upon arrival.

She bypasses the skiing holiday, the latest way for the Irish to feel worldly and spend too much money. She knows she would enjoy the Austrian chalet, just being on the other side of the glass the most. Reason enough not to invest in snow pants. Forget the hat, mitts, boots, goggles and lifts. Cheaper hot chocolate. Trying to turn, lean in and avoid blasted fences. She can picture herself at the top of the bunny slope, afraid at even such a little height, composing a poem in her head instead. Procrastinating and imagining another dreamworld reality again. So much for broadening the artsy girl with a spot of athletics.

She'd rather be a muse anyway. The star of someone else's story. She wonders how many words have been devoted to elements of her DNA. Naught compared to the unread vignettes she has scattered across random screens in her quest for validation and reciprocated love. How many of these men truly deserve to be importalized by her pen? The deliberation doesn't take that long.
Sometimes she writes back from the future to give her suitors a thrill. The time difference can be a plus, especially after the magical hour of midnight. She classifies herself as unaccomplished in reference to the terminology of Jane Austen; that if catapulted back into the past, she would surely be wearing her empire-waist dress whilst reclining on the shelf. He says she will probably make some lucky guy a great wife one day, even if she can't sing, paint, draw, sew or cook. She can spell big words, intuit ten-cent meanings and make childish stick figures. What more could a man possibly want?

He arranges the papparazi-style pictures into a printed narrative with cartoon speech bubbles to tell the story of how they met. The mutual friend's thirtieth an unlikely impetus for possible-rebound romance. It is the progression of something happening between two people who hold their heads in a similar way. She doesn't mention anything about the fundamental clash between the fairy-tale ending and the 'To Be Continued...' elliptical finale. She wonders if this be another Choose Your Own Adventure story. How many times can you go back and choose a different choice?

The student in the next room counts down the days until she flies home with X's. Her calender and life are methodically crossed out. Time is marked like an achievement. She supposes everyday survival should be celebrated. But how do you grade or summarize the endless bleakness of January? It's been weeks since she has heard from him. But this is how it works with them. She wishes him Happy Groundhog Day when the page flips to Spring and February. She hasn't seen her shadow either. Does he ever lose sight of his? She dares him to write back, intiate any form of contact. When the silence offers no response except It Is What It Is, she sends a belated translation: Things are pretty crummy with me right now, and hearing from you, if only briefly, would perk me up. Please?

Caught up in his own surburban quarter-life crisis, he is not able to cut himself out of the chapter he has written himself into and tend to her latest crash-and-burn. Despite the unblinking poker-face of her phone, she still believes in the possibility of text message salvation.