eulogizing ruth popper

She watches her own grey toes. In the dimness of the room they resemble gravestones, which is fitting. She sees double, uses that as a sad amusement, blocking out objects with her big toe and still seeing them. As if she weren't even here.

The fight in her is diminished. Maybe gone for good. She can't remember being wild, she only remembers trying to escape dull days by lying as still as possible, faking sick and making forgettable excuses in order to do nothing but stare at the ceiling. There was nothing she ever wanted. Now she only wants to be left alone. If alone is all she'll be, then rip off the pretense and call it that. Call it an old woman in a dirty bedroom, no longer cared for, no longer wanted.

Her skin is cool. It isn't sweaty or dry, no, it's even, it might be pleasant, but she wants out of it. If there's no one to feel it, what's the point. Maybe if she were still pretty, she'd be wanted, but she isn't pretty enough and so she's just invisible.

Like an idiot, like a fool, she keeps hoping for the door to open.

Part of her wants sex so badly it hurts. Some days it possesses her and she can't think of anything else, it's all she can do to keep from rubbing herself on furniture like some animal in heat, offering it up to any warm body that happens to pass. She doesn't go after it, though, because she doesn't want a shameful angry fucking in some dark closet. She wants to be free, she wants back what she was before she fell in love and found herself imprisoned by the spectre she dreamt up.

It wasn't real and she knows that. She wanted it to be something it was clearly never going to, and she's culpable, not him. Could she ever be angry at him? No. Yes. Only in those insomniac 3am moments when she realizes she will never touch him. And she thinks he made her fall in love, like a curse, and how cruel to do that to her.

Then she spends the next day faking sick, playing hooky, staring at her toes and knowing she built her own damned prison. She saves up courage and starves herself so she'll be able to slip through the bars. She hopes she didn't invent her one good chance, but she knows nothing else will ever live up to it. Even if she makes it out alive, she'll be a fugitive, forever running from the sadness she brought upon herself.