Time and Again I Tell Myself...

Sordid details following...

In the black-light club, with the bass pounding, and the opening band screaming, she smiled.

And I thought again how beautiful she was when she smiled. How it was like a portal to another word.

And she did that thing girls do where they curl the hair in back of their ear. It's endearing as hell, especially if they can smile like the portal to another world.

But.

The light flashed.

And I looked at her arm. And saw the scars.

"What are the scars from?" But she didn't want to talk about it.

And from then on, I was obsessed with those scars. In the light of day, they seemed to vanish. But I found myself sneaking glances at them.

Maybe it was nothing.

For a long while it seemed like nothing.

And then a few weeks later, the scars looked fresh.

"Why do you have those scars?" I asked again.

She turned away. Didn't want to talk about it.

But I grabbed her hand. And ran my fingers along the scars. The fresh scars.

"Okay," she said. "I don't want to do it."

And she took her hand back and pulled her sleeve down. "Every day I tell myself it will be better. And most days it is. But when it's not... it's really not."

And she smiled. A sad smile. Still the portal to another world.

But not a world she wanted to live in. And not even a world I wanted to visit.

No matter how endearing it is when she tucked her hair behind her ear.

David Bowie - Ashes To Ashes on Vimeo.