girls

it started with the word ‘ing’. but the girls always thought it started at The Wording.

an understandable oversight.

it started out as a messaging convenience. one girl texted the other ‘wait’ and the other replied ‘ing’ to mean she was wait-ing. but over the years, ‘ing’ came to represent an endless self-referential present- an ungoverned state of activity.

you see, the girls understood The Wording a little better than the rest of you. they realised it happens all. the. time. and that if it happens all the time, you could do it all the time.

you could make. shit. up.

whenever two girls come together and fall apart, the wording falls together and then, comes apart.

when we forget this, we forget every choice we made. every thing our friendship built. and why we wanted to build it.

all the words they built came similarly so- an extension of words they learnt in their homes and schools. mutating everything to build the world they wanted to live in when they were together.

the girls created a language and the entire universe bent to their will.

eventually, their hair grew into each other’s. not in a particularly inconvenient way, considering they were always sharing earphones- a loose wire always dangling between them.

but ah well, our language, the one i write in rn, has its ways. ever talked to yourself? the most heartbreaking thing about heartbreak is that you have my word.

one girl decided to cut her hair.

their language let them do that you see. try “also pretty”s and not just “prettiers”. for the sake of trying. why, right? why cross the bridge if it's the same on either side. if no meaning compels you? that's the thing about ‘ing’, in an endless now, there is no meaning. they'd built a language without meaning. they'd built a language with only history.

on The Record as well, The Wording remains a muddled mess of memories. ideologies everywhere attempt to take credit for The Wording. but there is no capital lettered The Wording. there's only all our daily attempts to talk to each other, to do something together. there's infinite languages. there's one language. it's all the same. it's all we've got.

maybe the only way to keep all girls happy is to build a language without self, so you can never talk to yourself. but also, that would suck, if you were always surrounded by assholes.

so when she left, i sat in my room. without meaning. i struggled with meaning my whole life. that was why i fell in love with her- it was a love without meaning. and i hated myself too much to talk to myself.

i watched our language rot in its disuse, snapped earphones on my lap. the chatter from the next room rose, my parents and grandparents talking, but the words fell on my deaf ears, senseless. i couldn't understand a word. i went out for a walk.

i found i could barely make out the path or what i called it. i looked to the ocean and the trees and they all looked the same. a blank canvas, no colour, no form. i stared and then i stared harder. i tried to discern a shape, an outline, any division at all. nothing. everything.

the world was breaking, and i couldn't even make out the pieces.

i waited for A Wording to come. to decipher the world for me.

i waited for an explanation.

but nothing came, and time still passed.

and for the second time in 18 years, i didn't yearn for meaning.

the grey of the world enveloped me. i felt complete.

grey was her favourite colour.