watching you without me

this is rob's favourite. i think i wrote it in about january. then things brightened. but now they are not so merry again.


Watching you without me.

I watch you discreetly, sitting next to her, sitting where I should be. Or, to be more accurate, where I want to be.
If I watch hard enough, then I can learn her secret. The secret that they all have, the lesson that after all this time I havent been able to learn.
Shes pretty, I think, but Im pretty too. I think I am prettier than she is. But maybe she looks at me, and thinks the same. I dont see what he saw in her, Im prettier than she is. Obviously, I muse, prettiness isnt enough.
And Im funny. And young. They tell me Im beautiful. They tell me Im special. So, what is it? What is it that I lack? What do they have that I dont, what combination that makes them able to stay, when I have to leave?
Im obsessed with her. I cant move my eyes away. When I go away, I see her on every street corner, she is on every bus, every train. Then I look again, and it is just a similar jaw line, a similar hair shade, a similar eye. Even when it isnt her, I guess that they have it too. It. The spell, that extra something that I dont have. If I stare at her for long enough, then I can learn it too, I think. She turns up in my dreams, gloating, laughing at me, showing off the indefinable that makes her that much more than me. She gives me a glimpse, and I grasp at it, but it eludes my hands that shrink and cripple, unable to take from her what I need.
I want to seduce her. If I do that, then shell reveal to me what it is that makes her special, makes her more special than me. If I make her love me, then she will be forced to lay it bare, and I can take that quality, shell show me how to use it, how to keep it. And once I have that, then maybe I can have you.
I move away from the table and on to the dance floor, but I feel her right behind me, weaving the magic that makes her one to keep hold of. I study the way she holds her drink, the way she angles her head when she fires her cigarette. I watch you watching her, knowing that you see what I miss, and that you see in her what I lack.
I want to throw myself at your feet, at her feet, at the feet of all the girls and boys that have won the fight with the weapon that I cant seem to find. I want to beg and plead for them to give me the revelation; I want to make them fall in love with me so that I can see how they do it. I need them to share the secret of keeps.
But I am too afraid. They keep the nexus of it hidden; instead all they flaunt is the power that they have over me, not its source. The power gets bigger and bigger, it is choking my questions, and like the useless hands in my dream, I get smaller and more silent, unable to protest, unable to seduce.
They keep their secrets, and haunt my dreams, I watch you both.