Reading in-Between Lines

I collect memorable quotes and one-liners like spare change in my jacket pocket. Maybe one day there will be a need to spew passages from Vonnegut or exposition from Tanizaki. In drunken fits of ecstasy, perhaps I’ll wax poetic on Kundera and then cry over Chbosky, because I remembered there was once a time when teenagers all swore that [they] felt infinite.

These abstractions are so pleasing to hear because maybe, just maybe, they speak to a certain memory, an instance, or even a feeling. When our thoughts are articulated right on the page, we grasp at them without hesitation.

Nowadays I’m fixated on these lines from O’Hara’s Mayakovsky.

I’m tired of reinventing myself to be pleasing and demure as opposed to just being me, tired of chasing after fleeting romances, tired of all the sleepless nights spent thinking too much and the exhausting days spent thinking too little. Do they want complication or simplicity?

I’m so tired of waiting, O’Hara.

On countless train rides I’ve held a book between my hands, wondering if I finally stood out like the women in Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

I’ve carried a plethora books and collected their words, written reviews and essays, attending author signings and book events – does this make me different, Kundera? I blend in with the crowds of commuters because we’re all trying so desperately to get somewhere in the midst of all the congestion and delays, but will I ever be noticed or seen? For now I’m just a woman, searching for meaning and delving through words and phrases, digging for poignancy.

And to top it all off, I’ve fallen in love with Shakespeare’s works, wishing I could be just as talented and witty with words.

Love itself is protean, forever changing. I’m fearful of intimacy and so prone to overthinking. I crave honesty and attention, but Shakespeare said it best – the theatrics of love could potentially rob one’s sight.

There’s so much happening around me; is it worth it to be blind, Shakespeare?

I’m better with words found in poems, books, and plays than those in interspersed and succinct messages, the pitfalls of modern-day technology. I no longer wish to decipher thoughts and search for meaning, scrambling to understand why your texts no longer contain emojis or why you shifted from typing ‘okay’ to ‘k’, as if our relationship could afford to be this lazy. For once, can you be straight up with me?

I’m tired of reading in-between lines.

-Raisa Alexis Santos