Soft Things, Hard Things – Damyanti Biswas
Breaking up with a guy is like holding an animalâs throat, snapping its neck. You get better at it, with time.
A smile is an invitation to amble over and make sleazy small talk, buy you a drink; taking you out must lead to making out. When you offer to go Dutch â letâs not talk about their faces when you say that.
When one of them makes all the right noises though, hits the right bases with you at right intervals, makes a girl feel special on a moonlit night, well, what then, when all you looking for is a turn on, a quick fuck to turn away from, but his doggone melty eyes do their number on you?
âNot you, itâs me,â you mouth the clichĂ©. Let nobody tell you clichĂ©s hold no truth. Canât say to him you donât buy his âloveâ crap, you seen your mother puking her guts way too many nights, held her hair, watched her use makeup to hide needle marks on her arm and bruises on her face, scraped dustbins so your sister could eat. Found one morning youâd slept holding her little body gone cold and hard. You tell him nothing; you tell nobody.
He says baby but, and you snap I know how, and he whines but surely, and let us, and why not, and thatâs when you tell him itâs done, and adding a few cusswords you heard on the train at night, you tighten the turnbuckle on this rope gone slack between you. When he wonât let go, you take a hatchet to it, this softness. You lift that hatchet, show it to him, knowing all the while youâd do it on a dare. Please let him not dare you.
At night, on your pillow, you pretend itâs good for him what you done, itâs like muscles build the more you hurt them (all that lactic acid shit). Thatâs what you done for this sucker, broken his soul that bit. It would hurt less the next time; choose wiser than you.
Not because you like breaking things, (hell, who you kidding, maybe you do), but someoneâs gotta do it, so why not you? Better bump off soft things: they donât last. Mean nothing.
In the end, itâs not about happy or sad, girl. Those things donât exist. Go on, walk one day after another, breaking what necks you must. His, yours, does not matter. Hold on to the hard things. All that matters is the softness within you.
