A gal in fabulous shoes...

I turn my key in the lock, Rosie the cat wails loudly at me, flops down, her legs in the air, exposing smooth black hair and a belly to be rubbed.
She has missed me today, confused at the alarm at 6am and me, bleary eyed attempting to make coffee before my shower. Incoherent morning Me, discarding the outfit carefully chosen for this occassion once, twice and returning to it at last. Twisting and turning in the mirror, mismatched shoes.
Running out the door at 7:45, unsure and unsteady. Starting a new job.

Yesterday I had lunch in a dodgy Granville Street pub with a friend. Sat and talked about life and love and the choices we make blindly, the scar a bullet left puckered against the ink of his tattoo. We all have scars to carry, some only visible when we choose to look closer. He looked at me, told me I was beautiful; wondered aloud why I never seemed to settle for longer than a few months before running blindly away.

When we first met, he was only clean a year, trackmarks angrily winking against snow white skin.
Looked right at me across a crowded bar, told me I was trouble. Said he'd sat in the front row, and once in a while a girl like me walked past. Said he knew what trouble looked like and that I, I could be a problem for him. That I was dangerous, packaged so carefully in words and whisper.
That a smile from me hurt more than the chemo, more than the cancer that was bleeding through him.
He said he knew what trouble was, had dodged and leapt, blindly. That he knew from one look that I could make him fall. Sang me

There is a girl in New York City, who calls herself the human trampoline.
And sometimes when I'm falling, flying or tumbling in turmoil, I say "Oh, so this is what she means"...

I've spent so long falling and flying that when a man looks at me, tells me I am beautiful I am always looking over his shoulder for the catch. Have lost faith in me, that beauty is ingrained in all that is me. That when I catch an interested eye, I need to stop from pressing Fast Forward.
That life somes slowly and sometimes unfairly - that we are cruel and uncalled for, that we all have choices.

That at times the loneliness hits so hard, I can no longer breathe. I spend so much time holding my own against all this, that sometimes, after a bad day it hits harder. That I should want so much more. That The Actor and The Aussie invited all that was dormant in. That I am no longer settling for anything less.

Questioning. Does that make me weak? What would the girl you see walking down the road in those fabulous shoes give for the love of a good man?