Underwhelming

Often, I’m a rose or a sonnet or a bottle of wine – red as the blood that rushes to one’s cheeks, red as the lipstick one reapplies, lips magnified in a compact mirror like two twists of red liquorice. What am I?

Sweet, I am. The object of your affection. Sugar plum, honey, sweetie pie, pumpkin. I’m a mouthful. Sometimes I slide off your tongue like one’s native language. Sometimes I catch in your throat like a loose seam on a branch.

Obnoxious, I’ve been called. As loud as a megaphone. Other times, as quiet as string and paper cups.

Sometimes I’m naïve, sporting Velcro sneakers.

Other times, dependent. Tie my shoelaces?

Tangled, untangled.

Crinkled, smooth.

Sometimes, I’m wrapping paper and ribbon. Other times, a simple meal. Clean laundry on the line.

Imperceptible, I’ve been called. A breeze, a wisp of smoke that slips through your grip. And you stare at both your empty hands whose lines form a roadmap to who knows where.

“I’d like to see more of the quotidian. The little things.”

“Like?”

Nora cleared her throat. “Like a toothbrush holder, I don’t know. A vanity with home splayed out atop it. Easy, accessible, yours.”

She folded her arms on the coffee table, the mahogany spotted with toffee sunrise, leaves dozing outside the living room window. White frames, smudged panes – was that her glistening fingerprint or his? Invisible at night but momentarily imbued with caramelised morning.

“As opposed to a toiletries bag?” said Henri, his eyes journeying up her arms, hair golden as wheat. His notebook, beneath her bitten fingernails, brushed orange.

“Exactly – as opposed to living out of a bag. All those temporary existences in hostels and shared accommodation.”

Henri nodded.

“Or more discomfort,” said Nora, “Like when we read that script aloud, do you recall?”

“The romance?”

“That’s the one. The humiliation of it. The awkwardness. The second-guessing of everything we’d built.”

“Were you second-guessing everything?”

“Weren’t you? The point is you held me afterwards. You held me anyway.”

Leaves bobbed outside the window, and pages inside blinked grey under shadow caresses.

Henri folded his legs and sat on the carpet opposite Nora, the stretching silhouettes curving across his fiery beard. “There’s the misconception that you’re never supposed to feel awkward with your partner.”

“Misconception,” affirmed Nora.

As the dawn sky cracked open like crème brûlée, revealing soft and gooey light, Henri lay back and shut his eyes. Felt he was floating atop their fringed ochre carpet, its soft tassels tender as a breeze, sunlight blossoming behind his lids like chrysanthemums.

“I’ll put some coffee on,” said Nora, rising from the floor, “and then we’ll brainstorm.”

Henri hummed his assent, back floating in the nascent pool of white sunshine.

“Oh!” said Nora, pausing in the doorway, a flash of child’s exuberance in her sleepless eyes. “Wanna try the Kenyan beans?”

*

Across the sun-bleached room and its sparkling dust motes, a lampshade still glowed orange like a buoy. Nora clicked it off and suppressed a yawn.

Henri, meanwhile, sat cross-legged pouring the coffee, a nutty aroma lassoing Nora into his orbit.

He took a sip.

She took a sip.

Fruity, he thought.

Tannic, she thought, throwing her head back, and cracking her back in twists. Wringing herself like a washrag.

Henri gathered up his notebook and studied it like a menu. What am I?

“How about this,” he said, “I’m compromise.”

“I’m wounded pride,” yawned Nora.

“I’m a snarl.”

“I’m an arrow nocked then quivered.”

“Knocked?”

“Nocked.”

“K-N—”

Nora snatched up his pencil and attacked the page, her handwriting like a doctor’s prescription legible only to a small handful, Henri amongst them.

“Ah,” he mused, rubbing at his eyes. “Then I’m the spared wildebeest.”

“Or,” said Nora, “I’m a mirror.”

“Cracked.”

“A fault line.”

“Perhaps.”

 “I am not grand,” said Nora.

“No.”

“I’m unironed,” she continued.

“Unbuttoned,” said he.

 “Underwhelming.” Sounded more like a question, a tenuous epiphany. A dream, recalled.

Henri frowned, doe-eyed.

“In the best sense of the word,” laughed Nora, her under eyes dark and sunken like bruised fruit. Lips chapped, hair knotted, white T-shirt stained with Bolognese. His.

Ugly, thought Henri, his eyes absorbing her. A sponge, dishwater. Endearingly ugly, she was.

So, what am I? A list of oxymorons and contradictions that, within, yield pearl-shaped truth. And what, then, is a contradiction if not a necessary irritant urging its production?

Nora crawled over and nuzzled his beard. Bad breath, the both of them. Teeth unbrushed. The astringence of coffee prickling the nose like cactus spines, quills of a porcupine.

And still Henri held her closer. Hand in her knotted hair, fingertips against an oily scalp.

And still Nora held him closer. Hand cupping his jaw, nose brushing his thorned upper lip.

“I need to shower,” said Nora, smacking him on the lips and rising from the carpet. Henri watched her disappear through the doorway. Her clumsy gait, as though she were wearing flippers. Her dimpled thighs wobbling like jelly. Her threadbare T-shirt glued to her bottom like papier-mâché, a little black m visible beneath the sheer cotton like a child’s sketch of a distant bird.

I’m this, thought Nora, as she plucked a towel from the linen cupboard.

I’m this, thought Henri, as he lay back on the living room floor. Their living room floor. Their IKEA rug, their potted plants purchased down the road, their mugs thrown and fired in ceramics, their curtains sewn from old bedsheets, from a past apartment, a past bed. A past, shared.

Henri flipped open his notebook. Cracked its spine.

I’m a coat mended with miscoloured thread. I’m an odd button but I’ll do. I’m shoes, worn in.

I’m a barely legible grocery list.

I’m untweezed and unshaven. I’m prickly disenchantment.

A healthy disagreement. A difficult conversation. Consistency, predictability, routine.

Tacit understanding and misunderstanding.

I’m the click of the kettle. The hum of the fridge.

I’m my favourite cereal respawning in the pantry.

*

A quiet snore reeled Nora into the living room where she found Henri in his red sweater, splayed out on the carpet like a maple leaf. Found the pages of his notebook fluttering, mothlike. The scene was ribboned in light leaks – their little life, the film.

Nora glanced at the hideous floral clock on the wall. Henri bought it at a garage sale years ago. Repaired it himself.

She waddled over, carpet soft as moss against her bare feet, a green towel wrapped around her like a frond, another on her head like a fruit hat. Henri lay there childlike, lids pink. She would have liked to drape a blanket over him, rest a cushion beneath his head.

“Henri,” she whispered instead. “Henri, it’s a quarter to nine.”