Twenty Four Years
Twenty Four Years
by Dylan Thomas
Twenty-four years remind the tears of my eyes.
(Bury the dead for fear that they walk to the grave in labour.)
In the groin of the natural doorway I crouched like a tailor
Sewing a shroud for a journey
By the light of the meat-eating sun.
Dressed to die, the sensual strut begun,
With my red veins full of money,
In the final direction of the elementary town
I advance for as long as forever is.
My twenty-fifth birthday is coming up soon. Just a few more months. As I sit here in the dark, I think, I wonder, I regret. My life means nothing to me. I try to think of things I've accomplished, but nothing readily rises to the surface. My hands are shaking even as they rest on my thighs. Something must have happened last year, something that was good and made me whole. I try to think back, but my memory is blank and black, black as the cloth I wear.Twenty four years have passed and the only thing I learned of this year was the touch of a man. To feel your hands on me, as hot as the noonday sun in July, that was an exquisite rapture. To lie there in the dark and hear you whispering to me--even though I can't comprehend a word you say--as your hands touched me like no one ever had before was something I want again. Twenty four long years before I could say I exploded and imploded at the same time, gasping for air, my chest heaving as my eyes shut tight, my back arching and my hips rising up off the bed to meet yours again and again.To feel your mouth on me even though I couldn't see you, fire coursing through my veins. A nip, a bite, a long slow lick, all of it perfect. I begged, I pleaded, I craved so much more and you gave it to me, but only that one time. I bit my lip as you sucked on my hip, your hands on my thighs, your rough thumbs caressing the soft flesh you found there. You breathed my name once; could barely hear you above my own ragged breath. All night, you touched me, not just my body, but my soul. To finally feel this after more than two decades was something I'd only dreamed of. You were gentle.Skin on skin, lip to lip, our bodies as close as possible before they became one.You knew so much more than I did, but you taught me well. My body would shake, but if you touched me just right it would stop and time would stand still for an instant. You taught me again and again, my head resting on your chest on the sun rose, the inside of my eyes turning pink in the soft light.A terrible tango we danced after that night, the only night. Words were not spoken, eyes were not met, for an entire year. We'd pretend, we'd act, but we were players who didn't know the play, nor the lines or the moves. An ecstasy of not knowing, the exhilaration of ignorance. Hours to days to weeks to months and not even a glimmer of hope. You were a good actor. I was not. I was dying inside. Black in my eyes, black on my body, not a bit of light touched me since the beginning of the twenty-fourth year.As I sit here, I begin to cry. Warm tears on white cheeks. Pure and innocent no more.The light of the full moon streams silently through the window, blinding me. Reflecting off the January snow, it makes my dark world bright as day. I place my head in my hands, desperate to blind myself. I remembered how you had whispered "Happy birthday" in my ear as I had fallen asleep. When I awoke I was alone. Should've known then. I can still hear your voice in my head.Had I hoped for too much? I just wanted to see you smile at me like you used to. I don't remembering smiling once this year, this cursed twenty-fourth year.If only you could know how many times I wished I would die, although I wouldn't want to burden you, my creator and my demon, with the weight of that wish. Suffice to say it was every single day since that one night. A brave front was all I had. I could fool some, but not all. Some of them knew something was not right, and I would never be right again. You broke me. Even as you had tried to fill me, you shattered and splintered me a thousand times over. Why did you do what you did? A cruel joke? Did you want to be my first heartbreak so you could laugh and say "I was the first" when you watched it happen to me over and over again? Because it happened too many times. I tried to forget you, to move on with others, but it never worked. Your fault, all of it.I was being built up for twenty-four agonizingly slow years and you knocked me down in the space of one night. I hope you're happy. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I hope you enjoyed watching me squirm in your grasp, writhing under your sensitive fingertips. It was me that night, not you. You never asked for anything in return.A black rose on the pillow where you had been.As I sob, I try to find a moment in the past year that didn't involve me wanting you, or wanting to kill you. I can find none. You don't know how long I kept that rose, do you? It's still in a box beneath the bed where you ravished and ruined me. I look out across the moonlit landscape, look up into the sky and see every branch's silhouette on that ancient oak tree. A billion stars, all as alone and cold as I am. I can see my reflection in the window...I look away.A shiver through my body as I fall back, my hands at my sides. No one had every touched me like you had, and no one ever will. If you wanted to break my heart, you did a damn good job of it. Every morning I wake is agony. Are you even capable of remorse? Can you even imagine the hell you're putting me through? You came to me in the night, dressed from head to toe in the colors of mourning, my black angel. You bled your black onto me, marring the perfect white of the sweet virgin. You didn't just taint the purity, you overtook it. There was no gray--your black into my white turned me dark as well.I realize I'm just thinking in circles, and each circle leads me back to you, your rough hands, your black clothes, your bright eyes. I can almost see them looking into me in the darkness. If only I could take it back. When you came to me, that look in those eyes, that smile on those lips, could I have said no? Could I have been strong enough to turn down the one thing I wanted most? Looking back, I know the answer is no and will always be no. What happened was meant to happen.Fire to ice when you touch me now. Even an innocent brush of your hand against my arm freezes my blood in my veins. Had I ever had a heart? I can't feel it beating now.Twenty four years gone by, and what have I to show from them? A scar no one but you can see. A vice that squeezes my chest when I see you so I can't breathe, a vice on my brain so that I can't think. Take it back, make it all not true.Say you love me.Lie to me.I wonder what the twenty-fifth year will bring. I jump as the door bursts open and there you stand, all in black, your eyes bright as the moonlight. I look up at you, my eyes red, my fingers trembling. A pathetic shell of myself. Will you fill me up again, then chip away at me until another leak springs and I drain to empty once more? Scratch the surface 'til it bleeds, then repeat. I say nothing; neither do you. Break me again if you're going to. Don't make me wait.Your soft lips on mine before I know what's happening. You get no reaction from me, the shock is too great. You pull away and I lick my lips, just a hint of your taste lingering there. I close my eyes, a solitary tear forming and falling down my cheek. When I can see again, you're gone. I find a red rose in my lap. Red? There hasn't been red since that night. I pick it up and slide the silky smooth petals over my lips. Soft as you. What does this mean? What could it possibly mean? I should just throw this rose in the box with the other one. But the red held my eye. Red as blood.Blood.I love you, too, Joel.
