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Glanant Road
by Zara Little-Campbell
02/06/12
Content Warning: the following work may not be suitable for younger audiences as it contains some adult themes.
02/06/12
Content Warning: the following work may not be suitable for younger audiences as it contains some adult themes.
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Glanant Road is a story about two people who love each other despite knowing they are caught in a destructive relationship. It is written from both a female and male viewpoint, showing how varied their perception of each other and themselves is.
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I don’t know why, but I am here again. His room is littered with beer cans and cigarette butts. His clothes lie in heaped chaos around the room, clustered together in corners hiding from my critical gaze. He never tidies his room; the dirt accumulates like ticks on a calendar marking our days spent together, measured hours, forced quality time. But with every calendar, its days are numbered and before you realise, the pages have run out, all the happy pictures of moments trapped in ink are just that, cut-outs, fragments of something unachievable.
He offers me a drink, vodka of course, never anything of sobriety nature. I take the freshly rinsed glass; there is still grime in the crevasses. I am the grime in the crevasses’ of his life? The dark edges he no long allows himself to look at? I try to shake off my rising doubts and sit on his bed. He turns on his computer; the sides of the keyboard are coated in ash. He lives in it, he breathes it, and he has become it. I gulp down my drink. The vodka burns the back of my throat, but in a strange extreme this comforts me. It is warmth that he can only give me from a bottle. Its heat is a close intimacy that offers me some indication that I am living, at least for short moments at a time.
He has posters on his wall, album art of Pink Floyd and of films that were before my time. Like so many things he says to me, they are before my time. I feel we are stuck in different time zones and despite him having the advantage, I have never felt more mature, more together with my life than when I watch the strands of his unravel. He says the age gap doesn’t make any odds, well not to him. We are a decade apart in physical age, and so far apart in other variants. It’s a wonder we are still together. But it has been that long a comfort has slipped between us, and though we don’t fit, it’s much less of a sacrifice or risk than spending our days alone.
She comes back every day and though I know it’s silly, each time I see her I’m surprised, a little awed and I suppose grateful that she, unlike those before her, is so persistent and still here. It won’t last for long, I have that effect. The sudden burst of infatuation, the wild longing to touch and be touched gradually simmers down to indifference and resentment. Perhaps it’s already there, the seed of doubt, the rightful knowledge of my inevitable failure. Some days she can’t bring herself to look at me, and other days I imagine that inside, her whole perception of me is shifting and remaking itself like a grotesque clay sculpture, forever pliable. She shifts on the bed, she’s uncomfortable, she always fidgets when she is agitated or nervous. Has she something to say? Something to add to our fangled existence? Whatever it was that was burning the tip of her tongue she swallows it with the vodka. I turn up the music to make her focus on her thoughts, to drag them up to the surface. I want her to have to courage to say or do whatever it is that is weighing on her. She shifts again, the top she is wearing has a perfectly placed neckline and I can see from a perched vantage a good reason why we still do this. For the first time since she arrived she catches my eye, the same look crosses us both and suddenly I am not interested in what she is thinking or saying but rather what her body tells me. I lean forward ready to embrace her perfumed neck. She smiles and permits me to sit next to her. Her small features allow me to think that I am, or could be her protector, that she needs me, that in her life I serve a purpose rather than function as a strain. It is a small fantasy of mine because I know she doesn’t need me. As she clasps and unclasps my hair I realise her determined face will never need me, and the only protection she will ever need will be from me and the hurt I am sure to cause.
As I lay in the soft nook of flesh, something stirred inside me, something dark and something hidden. A deep unguarded niggling came over me and as I looked at his face I knew that it had changed, or least my perception of him. He keeps me at a distance, he likes it that way, and I’m never in his inner circle or his thoughts. And even though it is me there holding him, wrapping him in love and safety he never gives anything back. He holds me close, but even in the dark I feel his eyes twitch with insincerity. The orange glow from the street lamps is my friend but his foe. He uncurls his leg and kisses my forehead. A warm and carefully placed kissed and that falls two inches from the section that insinuates love. His hand slides across my covered stomach, searching for my breasts. My hands glide over his chest, applying pressure, partly to keep him at a safe distance and partly to spur him on. His entire body shifts under the duvet and he is lying facing me. In the night his eyes look like burnt duffle coat buttons, his nose protrudes, every feature on his face is a sharp weapon that I throw myself at. Suddenly he is on top of me. I’m unsure. Will he love me more or at all if I give what I can to him. I feel his weight rest on my legs as he removes my top and then my underwear. I’m lying naked now, search for an expression, for an ounce of hope. His face meets mine and he sucks the breath from my lungs.
She panders to me, puts on her sexy clothes, voice and lingerie. Her smile is never more playful than in these moments. She does it all to keep me, but I’m already hooked, irrevocably lost in her that I no longer know my way back. I keep trying to drive her away only to get pulled in deeper and deeper. My indifference is staged, to force her away to prevent her from seeing my true self, a self wrapped in hatred and envy for those who never in their lives have had to struggle.
She tugs on my hair again and wraps her hands around my face. Her openness is an annoyance. Her trust is putrid. I hate her for it sometimes and I hate her more than anything for the faith she has in me. I remove her hands and burry my face in her neck. Hidden she can’t see my expression; she can’t save me when I chose darkness. She whispers in my ear, words that almost sound like ‘I love you’, but how could she? How could she ever? She grabs my waist and pulls me closer. I break from her rhythm and try to find my own. Her pulsating body agitates me so I move harder and faster, as if I can melt away boundaries, be freed from expectation.
He loves me; he just has a hard time showing it. Our limbs weave into intricate shapes and he takes all I offer him. I’m open to him and he leaves nothing untouched. His lust is as forceful as his thrust, as if somehow he can carve an undeniable niche in me, a physical place just for him. He doesn’t need to. I wonder if he knows how I feel? If he could only see how much I’ve changed, how much of myself I’d given up. He bites my neck and I groan in pain. He doesn’t notice. He caught in his own sensations, they consume him. He moves rhythmically above me, he is close now. And when he finally comes his face wrinkles into an expression of self-loathing and relief. His eyes never catch mine; they glide over me as though I am an object he has suddenly out-grown. He pulls out of me and I can feel his heavy breath roll over me just before he rolls out of the bed. He reaches for his cigarettes and I know he doesn’t care if I stay or go. I stay to annoy him, to take up an actual space in his life, even if it’s just his bed. He allows me, he wants seconds. I lie in the crumpled bed linen, I stretch and smile. He loves me. Love is a compromise and I would have him in any way I could.
He offers me a drink, vodka of course, never anything of sobriety nature. I take the freshly rinsed glass; there is still grime in the crevasses. I am the grime in the crevasses’ of his life? The dark edges he no long allows himself to look at? I try to shake off my rising doubts and sit on his bed. He turns on his computer; the sides of the keyboard are coated in ash. He lives in it, he breathes it, and he has become it. I gulp down my drink. The vodka burns the back of my throat, but in a strange extreme this comforts me. It is warmth that he can only give me from a bottle. Its heat is a close intimacy that offers me some indication that I am living, at least for short moments at a time.
He has posters on his wall, album art of Pink Floyd and of films that were before my time. Like so many things he says to me, they are before my time. I feel we are stuck in different time zones and despite him having the advantage, I have never felt more mature, more together with my life than when I watch the strands of his unravel. He says the age gap doesn’t make any odds, well not to him. We are a decade apart in physical age, and so far apart in other variants. It’s a wonder we are still together. But it has been that long a comfort has slipped between us, and though we don’t fit, it’s much less of a sacrifice or risk than spending our days alone.
She comes back every day and though I know it’s silly, each time I see her I’m surprised, a little awed and I suppose grateful that she, unlike those before her, is so persistent and still here. It won’t last for long, I have that effect. The sudden burst of infatuation, the wild longing to touch and be touched gradually simmers down to indifference and resentment. Perhaps it’s already there, the seed of doubt, the rightful knowledge of my inevitable failure. Some days she can’t bring herself to look at me, and other days I imagine that inside, her whole perception of me is shifting and remaking itself like a grotesque clay sculpture, forever pliable. She shifts on the bed, she’s uncomfortable, she always fidgets when she is agitated or nervous. Has she something to say? Something to add to our fangled existence? Whatever it was that was burning the tip of her tongue she swallows it with the vodka. I turn up the music to make her focus on her thoughts, to drag them up to the surface. I want her to have to courage to say or do whatever it is that is weighing on her. She shifts again, the top she is wearing has a perfectly placed neckline and I can see from a perched vantage a good reason why we still do this. For the first time since she arrived she catches my eye, the same look crosses us both and suddenly I am not interested in what she is thinking or saying but rather what her body tells me. I lean forward ready to embrace her perfumed neck. She smiles and permits me to sit next to her. Her small features allow me to think that I am, or could be her protector, that she needs me, that in her life I serve a purpose rather than function as a strain. It is a small fantasy of mine because I know she doesn’t need me. As she clasps and unclasps my hair I realise her determined face will never need me, and the only protection she will ever need will be from me and the hurt I am sure to cause.
As I lay in the soft nook of flesh, something stirred inside me, something dark and something hidden. A deep unguarded niggling came over me and as I looked at his face I knew that it had changed, or least my perception of him. He keeps me at a distance, he likes it that way, and I’m never in his inner circle or his thoughts. And even though it is me there holding him, wrapping him in love and safety he never gives anything back. He holds me close, but even in the dark I feel his eyes twitch with insincerity. The orange glow from the street lamps is my friend but his foe. He uncurls his leg and kisses my forehead. A warm and carefully placed kissed and that falls two inches from the section that insinuates love. His hand slides across my covered stomach, searching for my breasts. My hands glide over his chest, applying pressure, partly to keep him at a safe distance and partly to spur him on. His entire body shifts under the duvet and he is lying facing me. In the night his eyes look like burnt duffle coat buttons, his nose protrudes, every feature on his face is a sharp weapon that I throw myself at. Suddenly he is on top of me. I’m unsure. Will he love me more or at all if I give what I can to him. I feel his weight rest on my legs as he removes my top and then my underwear. I’m lying naked now, search for an expression, for an ounce of hope. His face meets mine and he sucks the breath from my lungs.
She panders to me, puts on her sexy clothes, voice and lingerie. Her smile is never more playful than in these moments. She does it all to keep me, but I’m already hooked, irrevocably lost in her that I no longer know my way back. I keep trying to drive her away only to get pulled in deeper and deeper. My indifference is staged, to force her away to prevent her from seeing my true self, a self wrapped in hatred and envy for those who never in their lives have had to struggle.
She tugs on my hair again and wraps her hands around my face. Her openness is an annoyance. Her trust is putrid. I hate her for it sometimes and I hate her more than anything for the faith she has in me. I remove her hands and burry my face in her neck. Hidden she can’t see my expression; she can’t save me when I chose darkness. She whispers in my ear, words that almost sound like ‘I love you’, but how could she? How could she ever? She grabs my waist and pulls me closer. I break from her rhythm and try to find my own. Her pulsating body agitates me so I move harder and faster, as if I can melt away boundaries, be freed from expectation.
He loves me; he just has a hard time showing it. Our limbs weave into intricate shapes and he takes all I offer him. I’m open to him and he leaves nothing untouched. His lust is as forceful as his thrust, as if somehow he can carve an undeniable niche in me, a physical place just for him. He doesn’t need to. I wonder if he knows how I feel? If he could only see how much I’ve changed, how much of myself I’d given up. He bites my neck and I groan in pain. He doesn’t notice. He caught in his own sensations, they consume him. He moves rhythmically above me, he is close now. And when he finally comes his face wrinkles into an expression of self-loathing and relief. His eyes never catch mine; they glide over me as though I am an object he has suddenly out-grown. He pulls out of me and I can feel his heavy breath roll over me just before he rolls out of the bed. He reaches for his cigarettes and I know he doesn’t care if I stay or go. I stay to annoy him, to take up an actual space in his life, even if it’s just his bed. He allows me, he wants seconds. I lie in the crumpled bed linen, I stretch and smile. He loves me. Love is a compromise and I would have him in any way I could.
About Author
Zara Little-Campbell is a writer from Ballinasloe, Co. Galway, Ireland. Her poetry has been published in Sigla and Crannóg magazine. She has also co-edited ‘Rewind’ and has had a collection of her poetry published in the anthology. Zara won the Jonathan Swift Award for poetry in 2008 with her poem ‘Sycamore Trees’ and was shortlisted for the Short Story Award in 2009.
If you would like to contact Zara then please email thewritingpeople@gmail.com for more information.
