Anger (Excerpts)

II

My history with anger began two years ago, when I jumped off the security ship and started freelancing and we started dating. Before that, I do not remember flying off the handle. I was not immature and stubborn. With him, I learned things--like anger and insecurity and regret.

There seems to be, inside my body, a ball of fury that solidifies in a snap. Bursts. Then dissipate. I have no awareness of when I started to carry this burden nor do I remember having nursed them. I have it in my body the way I have organs. It swirls the way my blood drives to every capillary and every vein. Naturally. As if it was imbued in me.

III

He thinks I like apples and brings me one when he can. I never bothered to correct him. Apples were okay. My hallyu friend told me once that ‘apple’ sounds like ‘Sorry’ in Korean and giving one is physicalising an apology. Sometimes I am tempted to ask him if he knew. I never did. The last time he brought me an apple, I remember staring at this big red fruit, as voluptuous as that swirling ball in my body.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. Nothing.

“What are you thinking?” Nothing.“There’s something wrong.” There’s none. He insisted.

Honestly, I do not know what’s wrong. All I know was that, I want to appease myself by letting that round fruit hit his skin and leave a bruise. I threw. He caught, flawlessly. And laughed. The ball burst.

IV

Humans created words to cast spells. We name things to make them ours. We identify people to give them power. We talk to express. We listen to understand. The life process of communication is bullet quick: the cells in the brain conjure society-agreed symbols, mash thoughts into letters before sliding them through throat nerves to create speech. Once thrown into the air, it flies to another person’s ear canals and traverses the same slopping path back to the brain where it eventually rests in peace. It sounds easy. But many words go berserk when they are free.

V

I hate you, I really hate you. He just continued to drive, on the same street we traversed a hundred times, every rainy daybreak, after every drunken night. Most of the time he would turn here and there and we’d get lost somewhere but we always find the street to my apartment. He missed a turn and the road resembled me and him and everything between us.  We were not going anywhere.

VI

“Can I tell you something?”

“Sure. What?”

“Your jeans have holes in them.”

“Its art.”

VII

I want to move my fingers over your skin, scratch deep until it bleeds. I want you to feel those small punctures of pain so you’ll understand. I want your body to memorize it, like when a tooth hurts or when your pinky gets bulldozed by the door. But instead, I throw out words, which never hurt you. You were so used to girls getting angry, throwing you out because you do not know how to break up with them. 

IX

Ten years is a long time to wait for someone. If I knew we would end with a deep drawn hostility, I would have stayed with him that night, uncaring, until the lights went out in Purple Haze, when there was no strange relationships or daughters hanging over our heads; when we were just two students talking about films and music and unwashed jeans.  Instead, I let time consume us. And we separate like we always do after a long night of aimless driving.