Writing by Dani Leever // Photograph by Clemence Leclerc
Writing by Dani Leever // Photograph by Clemence Leclerc
You speak of potato gems and your mother’s failure to cook for you at three in the morning while you masturbated in your room. I wish to scream at you to grow up. I almost vomited on my own avocado toast last night – but I am an adult and adults must make themselves carb-filled midnight snacks after an excessive amount of schnapps and what the bartender yelled to me was on special last night.
It’s okay if you don’t love me back.
You have so much room in your heart taken up by the deep admiration and obsession you have for yourself that I am shocked how seamlessly you remain polyamorous and able to care for other people.
I find you so intensely wonderful and addictively beautiful. But, I wish you would look at me the same way you look at yourself – with an intoxicating Enchantment.
When I speak of you, I choke like a confused teenager who hates to admit they are in love. I attempt to use long descriptive words to capture you but end up blurting half-sentences and acting like a girl in a 90’s movie who’s just been asked to prom.
I struggle to speak because all I want to do every day is kiss your smooth lips and have you stroke the nape of my neck like you do when we’re in the Northside listening to your favourite bands. I want to see your scars and tell you that you are the most beautiful person in the world.
But, sitting in your car tonight, where you first gave me a chocolate rose on our first date, the spell wore off. I realised that you’re kind of an arrogant prick.
It may be because you did not fuck me until the sun came up like you had done a few days ago. I know you have work tomorrow and I should not take that personally.
But, I had work “tomorrow” when we made a gin and tonic at your house at five AM that went so horribly wrong I almost cried from laughter. You pashed me with the saccharine taste of cherries and caster sugar that you attempted to sweeten your soda water cocktail with.
I had work “tomorrow” when we stayed up all night listening to Yael Naim and Destiny’s Child while engineering students threw up outside my window.
This will be in finished in two weeks. I will mutilate myself while you speak of your greatness and in a drunken haze, we will dismiss each other. It will be horrible and toxic and I will sheepishly sit with you the next day in a group seminar while we are taught how to eat pussy.
I will attempt to apologise before blurting out that I find you self-centred and arrogant. I will tell you how you make me feel small and how you speak over other people. I will tell you how your self-confidence is a thing to be admired before it overshadows the ability for other people to speak and be heard. Your tendency to make each conversation about yourself is exhausting.
I will get my disfigured leg tended to by a nurse named Dave and you and me will avoid eye contact for the rest of the weekend.
My feelings for you will shrink over time and although I miss the feeling of your curled hair woven in my fingers, I will come to realise how toxic you could have been.
So here I sit, in your car, as searing ash falls off the end of my cigarettes onto my jeans. My skin stitched and closed, I absently stare out the window as you fervently speak of fried potatoes.
