I love how all the constellations are named after Greek heros. It reminds me that, even though mortals, they have vices too. I love around 5am when all the lights dim, after the **** ones have become middle aged, in their 12hour life spans. When the glitter fades and rests, more like sad stars and gold leaf.
I love naked white sheets, how they work like paint thinner to remove last nights fresco, how they dry you off after soaking in a tub of room temperature lovers. I love the cab rides you take back into yourself, away from the still beautiful people who are all elsewhere doing impossibly beautiful things. When you arrive home, you will greet the mirror like a criminal in a line up, with premeditated sins armed with brass knuckles and all the good intentions buried far beneath the rap sheet.
I plan to be a sinner tonight. Could’ve been something else but looked way too good in my red dress to be anything Christian. I was talking to three different men in five different languages. I was twisting a blunt straw into page forty-seven of the coma sutra. I was dancing in an attempt to melt the belts off every man in the room, but I heard the truth that night. A Turk speaking Spanish, didn’t know me from Adam said;
“Tú creas en Dios pero tu haces malas cosas” You believe in God but you do bad things.
Suddenly I realized that I was in a place where all they play is house music, but can’t really say I felt at home in the barely audible, barely recognizable zone between having a good time and simply wasting it. I was a glutton with a grin, drinking warm gin, knowing no ones name but somehow I was everyones friend. I was standing in stilettos that made me 6ft tall but still felt small. I was messing up the shoes I paid too much for and still hurt to walk in and talk about conviction.
Truth is nobody believes me when I say I’m a ******. Truth is, the Bible didn’t see the inside of my face for a week while I was on vacation. Truth is, I’m not innocent, I’m just an abstinent fireplace that doesn’t wanna feel the fire kindle between her legs anymore. So don’t mind the ashes they’re just evidence of how brightly I can glow and I wanna glow hard like one dim star on an otherwise starless night that shines just to prove its fidelity and I know what you must think of me. “What hypocrisy!” but I don’t wanna enter prayer reeking of my addictions. Stinking of cologne. I don’t want God to smell another man on me, mistaking ménage á trois for the trinity.
So, so thank God! Thank God the stars don’t judge us for what we do beneath them. Thank God the stars don’t see the evil we commit under their names. Thank God for the silence, for the dimness, for nights spent alone. Thank God for friends who know more than just your bra strap. Thank god for cab rides home, cause tonight I’m gonna strip the spotlight. Tonight I’m gonna turn off Frank Ocean. Tonight I’m gonna take off the stilettos. I’m gonna take off the turquoise rings. I’m gonna take off the lipgloss and I’m gonna sleep naked, not trying to be ****, just trying to be me. A girl with a shaved head and with eyes deep enough to stand in, with convictions strong enough to stand on.
I’m finding the mercy of God right where I’m standing and its binding, it’s blinding, it’s forgiveness, most of all it’s mine. So, so tonight I’m gonna sit out on the fire escape eating an apple and I’m gonna nickname the view Eden and I’m gonna look up at those tragic stars and their pagan hearts full of mourning and I’m gonna say; What a fall, but what light, what impossible light.
By Alysia Harris