Blinding flashes. White. Sparks. The sounds. Click. Click. Click. A synchronised symphony of camera buttons pushed at the same time. The name rings in a distance. Like the last remnants of an echo. Time slows. It replays the scene in slow motion. The sounds muffle or magnify but are heard as noises from a distance.
Red. The glorious, gorgeous red. Carpet that runs the full length of the path. Barricades and bodyguards with arms folded facing the crowd. Are they frowning? Glaring? Resting bitch face? The flashes began to fade. The ends of the carpet are blurred at the edges.
My head spins with the visuals. One day, that will be me. One day…the hope dies before my brain has a chance to vocalise the thought. It’s added to trash before it even makes its way on my tongue. I blink. Once. Twice. The flashes go on and off. Bedazzling white, silver sparkles. The dress shimmers on my skin.
Books are turned into movie deals worth millions.
Someone younger than me has millions of followers. Someone my age makes the kind of music you replay. My friends have a job, my sister saves lives.
Don’t compare.
Don’t compare.
Don’t compare.
Fuck.
What am I doing? What is this quiet, invisible thing I keep calling work? I am not out there putting out fires or breaking hearts open and rearranging them with words. Nothing I make lingers long enough to be remembered.
There is no story here, only the outline of one that never began. No banners. Just my mom who parades me around saying, ‘oh she’s the best of the best.’
Am I now?
Even if I assume it to be true, then why do my boundaries feel real only inside me and negotiable to everyone else? I have heard remix of the same song.
‘You can work from anywhere. So why not just tag along?’
‘Take a break and help me with this.’
‘I will just sit here while you work. You continue.’ (Room of one’s own? Bullshit)
‘You want this?’
The door is locked. 30 minutes. Knock. ‘GO AWAY, I’M WORKING’. The scream shields me for exactly 15 minutes when there is a knock again.
‘You need to eat.’ — I have got these reminders every ten minutes in a thirty minute span because I delayed lunch by a couple of minutes. There is no place for my thoughts to run in the wild. There are implied restraints. Things that are expected of me. To bend and not break, to sway with the direction of the wind and still stay rooted. A lot of disagreement on this, the contradictory, complex, internal conflicts that dies down the moment I settle with a feel good romance book.
My jaw tightens. A dull ache builds where teeth meet restraint. Something physical, small, begins to hold all of it together.
Funny how interruptions are seen as acceptable because my schedule is flexible but I haven’t written in a while. Now my worth is worthless. Because what is left of me if I can’t give a reason to have my face on the banner.
Best of the best.
Narratives that go from, ‘aw a sad lonely girl who doesn’t leave her room’, to ‘we don’t understand what you write.’ There is no pleasing anybody.
A pulse starts behind my eyes. Not a thought, just pressure. A warning.
I am a little late. Maybe too late. I can’t turn this around. The one chance and I blew it because I didn’t stand my ground. Fever dreams. It’s all out of reach. I’m out of breath and I haven’t even begun chasing. The colours swim in my head, black spots in my vision, am I spinning? Or is the world… don’t trip. What could have been? I want to turn back around to summer of 2019. I cling to the belief that if I went back in time it can all be fixed and today I wouldn’t be sitting on my couch with backlog dreams.
The one thing I want. My kryptonite. Control. It’s a perfectionist’s ick. Suddenly all the illogical decisions are enabled.
Drop it. You missed it by a minute. It’s too late.
Red rimmed eyes.
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep the bubbling emotions from overflowing. The metallic taste spreads; thin, sharp, real. Something alive enough to bleed.
I’ve lost control.
I’ve lost autonomy.
I stay home.
Between four walls and conversations in my head, the concept of respect is nowhere to be seen. She has no life. She can certainly show up. That’s the least expected.
My heart is under a magnifier. The light burns at the places it’s pointed at. Not enough to leave scars but enough to make this feeling crawl up under my skin for refuge. It itches there, insistent, like something trying to surface and failing. It sets me off. It stays like the residue of a tattoo scar. Time heals is all I can say. Only if I were good with patience… It’s either numb myself to it all or… there is no other alternative honestly.
I exhale. Lie down. The fan spins. I count the wings. One. Two. Three. I stare at it like it can hypnotise me and put the pieces of me back together. Break open and fix my life. I am broken by whatever trance I hoped to be in. I want to make art out of all the rage and every bit of myself I push down, force into hiding and keep threatened so that it doesn’t dare reach up the rim of my eyes. Red rimmed eyes, not a sight I let others see.
This doesn’t belong in a museum. I poke at this thing that beats against my ribs. It has a PR plan and backup once the white flashes break into its walls. Click. Click. Click. Piece de resistance of my feelings. Get the good side. It’s dense. Like a sky before it splits, holding entire storms in suspension, refusing to choose where to break. Like lungs held too long underwater, burning quietly before the body decides for you.
And I know this: I am one small sound away from collapse. A crack in the jaw from clenching too hard. A breath taken wrong. One wrong word, one pause held too long, and everything I have kept arranged behind my ribs will stop pretending to be still.
It’s art. With no private viewing. Or exhibitions. I’d put a restricted access board if I could. Wait, I already do. I rewrite people before they reach me, decide their absence before they can arrive, close doors that were never knocked on. It’s easier this way: to remain a controlled explosion, to glow instead of detonate.
I want to be seen, and I want to remain impossible to look at, like light that blinds if you stare too long, like something astronomical, burning at a distance, measurable but never touchable. Like skin pulled tight over a bruise, visible, undeniable, but never invited to be pressed.
So I hold it, all of it. The colour, the heat, the unbearable, unspectacular weight of it, held just beneath the surface, where it can still be mistaken for composure.
I shut it all out. I sit up and put my headphones on. The song plays.
You sold your soul for some views on the internet
Gave your life for a half pack of cigarettes…