Waves were Noise

She moves her head along with the music, and maybe her feet too. It’s hard to tell since her image is filtered by smoke and the lighting is so dim. White light on white sheets over white skin. So fragile, like dirty children sleeping on benches, almost worth saving. Lying around her on the bed there are some objects I can distinguish: cd cases, book, ashtray. Ashes, like she needed any more in her life, any more consumption. An ashtray and a plastic bag full of weed. Of course she’s stoned, that’s nothing new. It’s been some time since I’ve last seen her this peaceful though, maybe it’s because she doesn’t know I’m here. The first time we got high together she told me she used to feel waves that once were noise. \"Not anymore\" she then said looking at her hands, and that was the first time I felt like hugging a grown up. She cried that night, and the following ones. Eventually I understood that it’s just something she does, the same way I wash my hands every ten minutes. Not without motives, though. She’s all about motives.

She’s wearing the same white extra-large tshirt she always wears to bed. It almost looks like a nightgown, like the saddest, most tortured nightgown. When I dream of her she’s always wearing the white t-shirt, without the stains. Sometimes she takes it off and the stains are on her body, and she tells me they are sourveniers of her childhood. When that happens I decide to wake up. I hate fiction, and she would never admit that anything about her is a direct product of her infancy. Not the stains, not the liquid hate that sometimes spills out of her mouth. She has spent entire nights telling me about her childhood, and she always talked about it as if she had seen it in a movie. In spite, I imagine it as a story Bukowski or Miller could have writen. Her mother is cooking dinner and she’s trying to be helpful, earn her love. She soaks the porcelain in the water, a huge smile on her face, but for a reason she doesn’t understand her mother is crying. For a moment, it’s all about dishes, detergent and tears. The story will end when she accidentally breaks a dish or a cup and her consumed mother hits her, blood coming out of her little nose. The little girl is lying on the floor, still in shock. She’s only six years old. Or twenty, and lying on the bed, absorted. There’s blood coming out of her nose, consequence of all the cocaine. And her mother is dead.

She moves her head to the music, like minimalist slow-dancing. In a moment I will make myself noticed and she will become a different person. She will turn down the music and off the lights, and she will tell me she loves me. She will use the exact same tone she used to let her mother know how much she loved her, in those rare times of soberty and calm. \"I love you\", and the \"Please don’t hurt me\" will hang in the air, unspoken.

Now, more than ever, the white light makes her skin look sad.