Show not your soul to the world, for bandits prey on easy treasures of the heart.
These are the words found etched at the crossroads of isolation and companionship. In grade school, teachers fail to tell you that friends are really highwaymen searching for a most precious commodity to steal - your time.
Relationships shouldn't be mistaken for honesty. Pals aren't good Samaritans waiting to aid those in the seclusion of life's desert. They reveal a true nature with age, peeling away layers of self-induced secretiveness until the bitter end. Wrong as it seems, acquaintances are merely the disguised enemies of tomorrow.
Or at least that's how I'm feeling at the current moment; betrayed, abandoned, and unquestionably loved. Yes, I'm loved. My scorn for those who I hold dear must mean one thing - that affection can only be validated by the feeling of loss. I think that has something to do with the phone calls and text messages I've exchanged with Grace over the course of my uneventful weekend. She's reaching out to me in the most simplest of ways, returning the favors of my concern one nudge at a time. We talk for 20 minutes here and there, intermittent IMs and picture messages followed by another half hour of conversations. She's trying to tell me something in not so many words. I know. This is how she's been since Freshman year.
"Meet me down at Applebee's, I'll introduce you to Pete and we can talk about those weird dreams you been having. Bring some cash - I need eyeliner."
Pause for two hours. A disturbance rocks my stained notes. The phone vibrates so much that it shakes its way off the kitchen table. Pick up. Again.
"Yeah, I didn't study for that quiz. We're graduating, fuck ten percent of my final grade. Is that local band playing the South Shore by the way? Oh. Jennette hon', is something wrong? Did I piss you off? It was just one night. Please don't let me find out those stupid poems about the end of the world have something to do with this."
She hears me plucking at the minor chords on my acoustic. There's a quiet tension, a somber silence in my empty house. She hangs up. There's only nausea and palpitations left in the cold, vacant space where a young girl's body used to sit. Now I'm standing, swimming in fear, sipping on illness, floating off into the dry heat of an unproductive, Sunday afternoon.
I fall asleep to the ringing in my head. There's always something to put the cherry on top.
Lock yourself away in the insane asylum of small talk and gossip. Human connection is about as dried up as a nursing home in Nevada. And I hate Nevada. It's just another desert filled with oh-so obvious outlaws looking to hold up a wagon train of passion, creating a Mexican standoff where your true self is the exploited victim of society's cavalry.
Fuck off, bandits. I'm sticking to my guns. The only ones I have...and they look like a human heart and soul.
Be genuine with me, Grace. Let me know you're not in on the plan to shut down the faithless radicals, bleeding artists, and lonely rebels wandering this fair city. Join the renegade posse, even if there are only two cowgirls.
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