murielle

LJ IDOL PRESENTS: LITERARY PRIZE FIGHT
Week 8: SPREZZATURA



RUMINATIONS



It’s not easy. It should be, she thinks, but it isn’t. It’s harder.

At this stage of her life, she believes she knows herself and there’s not much left to explore or experiment with, the way it was when she was younger, when every endeavor every relationship seemed exciting, an adventure. Throwing caution to the wind was par for the course. She had a strong network of friends and family to offer support, advice, or even criticism, buoying flagging confidence or a wounded ego, and infusing the deflated heart with hope and resolve.

But while she’s lived and loved dangerously before, now she is the definition of restraint. She keeps her cards internal. Close to the vest might as well be on one’s sleeve. She tells no one. She barely acknowledges it to herself. It hangs like a ghost in the hallway of her heart. She passes it, sees it without ever looking at it.

It is not examined. Little random acts of intimacy, or possible intimacies, are abandoned, left awash, bobbing on empty seas, ignored. And even if she holds some tiny treasure to her breast for the briefest instant before flinging it from her she doesn’t memorize it or challenge it or deconstruct it. There is no searching for clues of hidden significance or lasting meaning.

It is not indulged. Not like before, when thoughts and fantasies kept her awake at night or interrupted her day; random and welcome intruders. When words or looks flicker across her consciousness, she brushes them away, pushing them to the back of her mind, forgotten before they’re ever really remembered.

All of the signpost emotions of her youth are hidden under the years of being without, instead becoming a neon blur streaming past unintelligible to the naked eye, unrecognizable to the armored heart.

Was that jealousy? Was that spark of annoyance, that shard of threat, indicative of a rival? And if so, what to do?

Nothing.

There is nothing she can do. To do anything, to react in any way, would draw a spotlight to something in the shadows, where it needs to lurk, live until it grows into something viable, worthy of light, reliable.

Is this fear? Fear of being discovered to be not as above-it-all as she’s portrayed herself to be, or is it the thought of her total humiliation at being rejected that terrifies her.

And her path, recently so safe, secure, suddenly a tightrope, a perilous act of balance and skill and daring executed with aplomb, indifference. She must make it look easy when it is anything but.

She cannot even allow that she wants, because wanting is admitting to needing and needing is not permitted. It’s too late! She waited too long. It is over. And yet…

What is stopping her? What is truly stopping her from opening privately, just within herself, to the possibility?

Pride, is that all? Is she really denying herself what might be her very last chance because she’s too proud? So what if her spring is a distant memory? So what if the trail of broken hearts is just one heart, broken over and over again? So what?

And so what if it’s just a dream, a dream she hasn’t dared to dream for a very, very long time? So what?

We’re never too old to dream, are we?

Can she find the courage to hope again? And if she can hope, maybe she can dream, and if she can dream…risk?

It won’t be easy balancing fear and pride and hope, and nonchalance. Can she do it? Can she?

(Can I?)




AN: Concrit welcome—always. Thank you.