funk in deep freeze

The Watch

19 Jan 2005 Leave a Comment

by meganfinley in Uncategorized

He looked to me like a stranger last night.

I looked at him; at his face, at his hands, trying to find something of that boy I loved in high school. Just a glimpse of him. But it wasn’t there. His hair once blonde, now store-bought red. His face had changed, aged a few years. Even his clothes were different. Only the watch was the same.

I remember that watch from high school. Silver with numbers around the outside of the face like the kind that can be turned and wound. But this one couldn’t. It just looked like it could. I remember every day, as a joke, I would grab his wrist and try to turn it, saying one day it would surprise us both when it finaly did turn, just by sheer willing. But it, of course, never turned. And I think I kept doing it just for the physical contact. Today he still wears it, but it’s a different one. That old one broke sometime back when we weren’t really talking and he replaced it with its doppelganger- one that looked exactly like it, but didn’t carry with it all those memories of me. Though it was the mirror image of the old one, this watch looked different now around his strange wrist.

I miss that watch.

I miss him.

I miss his innocent eyes, his baby face, his natural hair, his scrawny frame and his loud unashamed character. I miss the way he looked at me in his shy child’s crush.

When my first love dumped me in high school he taught me to laugh away the pain and helped me heal. He became my shelter from then on. My cure for all wounds. He was magic. But it changed last night. Sitting on opposing couches I watched him as my cure became my assailant; both creating wounds and opening up old ones.

His eyes, once so innocent, were masked with darkness and menacing. His gaze that used to reach the deepest levels of love in my soul now sought out the darkest recesses of my character. They analyzed and cast an unflattering, florescent light on all my flaws. I felt naked and shameful in front of those newly critical eyes. I suddenly had a sense of embarrassment for my very existence as I sat in front of him.

From the mouth that once yipped and yowled for me across campus now spouted out criticisms. The voice that sounded like my favorite song now sounded harsh and painful to my ears. I wished for his words to stop firing at me. I wished for him to take it all back, take everything back. To have never had hurt me like he did in the beginning and like he was doing now.

When his anger had subsided we sat facing each other. I could hear his watch stubbornly ticking away the anxious, silent seconds.

I felt weak and I hated myself for it. I felt vulnerable still and unable to fight or stand up for myself. He had been my support and my strength for so long and now it had turned on me.

Even though he was the one causing me the pain I still couldn’t help but to look to him to ease it. I tried to find the boy who had been my strength, my shelter, my other half- my support. But he wasn’t there. The person sitting on my couch was a stranger to me. The boy hero was gone.

And with every tick of that watch I felt him slipping further and further away.