Nadja you’re not
I read Breton’s Nadja this morning on the tube and considered the fleeting nature of ghosts in the city. The more I chase you, the more you back away. You hide behind billboards and lamp posts, behind buses. You are a flash of light from a motorcyclists helmet, you are the last tube home that I just missed. You are the pixels slowly burning themselves into my screen. I hear my phone ring. You are slinking away. Somewhere, I imagine, you have a girlfriend. You are happy. There are new friends, a new life, none of which I can know about – none of us will ever know about. All that is left is lacuna, the space. And guilt, which is different for everyone.
People smoke here. A lot. I remember you smoking. Us smoking together. I remember. Nothing really. There was nothing important or spectacular about any of our time together. We had fun, we all had fun. There was no need to remember anything, to make memory moments, to squeeze eyes shut and impress. Because we never thought it would be anything apart from normal.
I chase you around the city. You are not an unknown woman, who represents my sexuality or fear of my mother. You are not unrequited love, nor my father, nor the phallic wish people tell me I have internalised. You are buttoned to the top, bruised fruit in the basket.
The more I look, the less you’re there. And I wish it wasn’t like this.
2 years ago • Notes