The Porcelain Doll

    He was preparing some monstrously indulgent breakfast as I sat picking at a slice of dry ginger cake, whilst my feverish mind recounted the night before. 

“It’s valentine’s day” he eagerly reminded me, perhaps hoping to provoke a reaction.

I couldn’t react even if I wanted to. I was paralyzed and poisoned, my throat swelling and starving my lungs of air, as I thought of The Porcelain Doll. Every synapse seemed to be under siege by luscious portraits of her. This was not a feeling that made me inclined to buy roses, or perfume, but to slip out into the night and search every inch of the Earth to find her, and collide with her in some nuclear reaction, in which we fused into a writhing and pulsating ball of energy and flame. Each second that our flesh wasn’t entwined was like an insult, an unnecessary dilution of my life, and one in which I considered death as a preferable alternative to existing without that ghostly ceramic skin at my fingertips. 

“ I’ve bought Michelle some chocolates, you know? A card too. And I’ve got to cook for her later, so can you make yourself scarce for a few hours?” he chimed.

What I wouldn’t give to be so easily pleased. If only I could operate on some uber-functional level in which I just celebrated love on one day a year and took it for granted the rest, instead of being pursued and terrorised at every moment, knowing she is somewhere where I am not, and that a minute I could have spent worshipping at her vivacious altar had been wasted on merely imagining it.
Still, at least I never found myself panic buying confectionary from a petrol station...

I found this short piece last week, and toyed with the idea of adapting it into a topical St Valentines Day post after seeing a man angrily stomping around the local convenience shop, trying to find a cheap box of chocolates. I had originally written it about 9 months ago, and like a little baby it seemed ripe for the world. 

Sometimes you struggle for inspiration, and you chase shadows looking for something to express. I heard that the actor Harry Dean Stanton has the words "Be Still and know..." written above his fireplace, and that is something I'm beginning to understand more and more in terms of why we often have the desire to express, but only sometimes the clarity to do it.

©2010 Copyright Daniel J. Fiasco