Diverse

The backs of Dianas legs are burning with an accumulation of lactic acid.   The ledge where she perches is narrower than she had anticipated and the weight of her slender body is held by the front of her feet and her calf muscles ache.      Her left hand is on the wall groping for any aperture into which she can claw her fingers and nails.      She takes the spray can from her shoulder bag and, contorting her body she extends her right arm and shoulder as far as possible and sprays the first letter, E.     E was for everything

She and Edgar had been neighbours, she walked back from school and saw his garage, open and inviting, she liked him and wanted him to like her too.   Talking, she saw the spray cans in a bag on the floor.  

Shall we? she whispered.   

We´ll get caught..  

She took a can, walked to the adjacent wall that belonged to a Spanish family, and acting with much more confidence than she felt, wrote the word Hola in big bold red letters. And thats how it began.

She was getting scared.  The wind had picked up, she felt it around her ankles even though her black jogging pants were pushed into her socks, it brought with it a sharp, hungry cold, a blade slicing through the air trying to cut her off the wall. She told herself not to look down and looked down, it would be a long fall, she needed to centralise herself.  She pulled her body to the left, sliding her feet along the ledge a little more, and began to spray the letter S.  S was for Simmons, his last name.

Of course, the neighbours complained about the tag, but no one knew who had sprayed it, and really no one, except the neighbours, cared.       Several days later they sprayed over Hola and then wrote Sorry.    Seemed like the funniest thing in the world as they ran away, laughing like donkeys.    That night he kissed her for the first time, he tasted of solvents from the paint, a smell would always belong to him.

Now her knees were shaking, the strain was building, she flattens herself against the wall, wishing she was a brick, breathing slowly, picturing herself sitting calmly, not 40 meters up an abandoned warehouse…. She feels her heartbeat steadying, her knees becoming controlled again, the danger passing for now.     Shifting her position, she sprays R.    R was for Richard. 

From then on both their courage and their intimacy grew, one shackled to the other.    The wilder they became with their spraying the less inhibited were their encounters.   Tagging the inside of the metro late at night was a new milestone - watched by the security camera - so they sprayed it too.  Doors opening, released to the night, tumbling down the grass edged slope, tangled limbs, tangled tongues in violent exploration, her hand drifting, his wide eyes like a startled deer, dark cosmos reflecting the orange street lights.

The bird lands close to her left shoulder, nearly scaring her off the wall..   it rests, making gentle calming noises, head tilted, looking at her curiously, she would wave it away if she had another arm..  she envies it and then she hates it, it feels her hate, turns and drops into curving dive....   pulling herself to the left another meter, she sprays E.   E is for Edgar.

Then there was the night they were chased, funny at first, they had sprayed what seemed like any other regular wall, but on closer inspection discovered it belonged to a police car depot. They ran, followed by men with torches and their shouting.   Edgar was fast but she was light and fit and kept pace, both panting, their animal instinct fuelled by the fear of capture.   It had become serious now, the men were closing the distance. Finally they reached salvation, the edge of their woods, throwing the rattling cans away to make no sound as they dove into its dark heart.   This had been too close, so much adrenaline, she thought her hands would never stop shaking.   After that they created their mutual tag, based on the combination of their initials.   They went to London where they tattooed it on the inside of their right thighs where only they could see.

Her throat tightens and the tears come, they arrive like that often and unannounced, spurred by a simple detail, some micro-memory and they blur her vision and plough her cheeks.  She doesn´t want them anymore, she needs them to stop or she too will stop.  She tries to clear them with her dirty sleeve, pulls herself further towards the safety of the distant stairs and sprays V.   V is for Vardy, her fathers surname.

After that, a recklessness entered, behaving almost like they wanted to be caught, every day they sprayed their tag somewhere. At weekends they would travel, spraying bigger and more audaciously, taking more risks, always dressed in black, rituals, sleep became secondary. They saw their tag in the news, people copied it, the local council used it in marketing for equal opportunities.   They were floating, they felt like millionaires.

She senses the spectre of dawn, though the suns appearance still only implied, she is freezing cold, numb fingers but still she notices the callous on her right index finger from the relentless spraying, she should cut that finger off, it belongs to him.    She squeezes the nozzle, I, I is for Indigo her middle name and the color of the spray.

And then he was gone.   In the darkness, one night, after spraying their tag on a bridge they had made love for the first time, he opened a beer, not looking at her she heard his words tell her that he would be going to university in the autumn, it turned out that all this time he had been studying. She was shocked, she had done nothing else but spray and dream.  They wrote to each other for a while, but he had lost interest with the distance between them, he met someone else.  She couldn´t let go, just like on the high walls.  

She put her feet on the fire escape stairs, reached over and sprayed the last letter, D, D is for Diana, D is for diverse, D is dreams, she let the can fall and climbed down the stairs.    Reaching the ground she started walking, the sun was rising now, leaking its light over the wasteland, bathing it in fools gold.    

She looked back up at the old warehouse and at her work, DIVERSƎ, only then realising that she had sprayed the E backwards. ----- Para V

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Publicado por La Fuente de Jade (España). © Todos los derechos reservados por La Fuente de Jade. Esta obra está protegida por las leyes aplicables de derechos de autor y propiedad intelectual.