I usually sit there for about an hour before deciding that I'm not really a writer, and I go read Nina's journal in a jealous and depressive haze. She does things with worlds--with words that I only spot in myself after a long snowfall of not writing, or when I burst out of a bathroom stall to scribble words on a bit of paper towel. She makes me pirouette pens, and gnaw on them, and fill my glass of water over and over, if only for something, anything to do.
Someone told me once that I should just give this up and buy a computer, but I think that's even worse. A computer is so useful that it's impossible to flee from, and you don't even get that pleasantly ratty stack of papers to weigh in your palms at the end. I joke with new acquaintances that the stack of papers is the only reason that I am a writer, but I am not really joking.
I sometimes think about being a trained monkey--you know, a number cruncher, a spell checker. Something repetitive and easy. I used to be a firefighter, the one who writes poems in the soot on the back of the truck but won't admit to it. The one who has burnt up bits of stories in his suit pockets, the ones he forgot about. The kind of firefighter who gives up on it in five years to be a writer instead, and regrets it. Writing is so complex, so taxing and so impossible. Nina makes it easy.
Nina makes it hard.
I sit down at my table and I write volumes. This stuff just pours out; it has been ever since she left. Left on a bus, or a train, or a horse; I don't even know. In all honesty, all I know is sleeping and eating and writing, lately. She does this to me. It is her fault.
In my spare hours between writing and sleeping (not much time at all, lately), I wander through the house. It feels wrong, almost drunken, like I'm going to jolt back to myself, horrified and naked, masturbating into some hotel cleaning lady�s mop bucket. All I do is stand in a doorway, soaking in what was, trying to absorb her talent and her taste for Spanish rum. She told me once (arbitrarily, over cornflakes) that Hemingway spent a year living off of Spanish rum and stale bread, and I sat and wondered how she could have known that.
I haven't picked up the vase yet.
I keep writing these words, waiting for some of them--God, any of them!--to stop being about Nina. Even 'the' is about her, especially 'the', if you think about it. Think about the sheer number of nouns she has handled in her lifetime.
She is beautiful, really. Hair like a lioness and eyes to match. She makes me feel tawny, makes me feel appreciated. She is aware of me, and it is one of the finer gifts I have received in my time here.
It was strange, how complacent I felt when she left. I knew my crime, and I thought she knew hers and would be back. Or something�upon reflection, that�s a really shitty way to put it. Our dynamic is loads healthier than that�no Law & Order relationship here.
Nina tells me things, points out pockets of magic for me to find, tells me stories of mad knights and fallen empires, spins fabrics and splats paint. She is a bug on a windshield; she is a sachet of potpourri. She is no longer mine, and I am sorry for it.