STUDY / Gary Barkovitch - Tumblr Posts

[ rose ] for barkovitch... or stebbins.... or both

[ rose ] for a lovesick memory.

Barkovitch has never been the kind of kid that people got along with. always a little too snide, mistaking pride for honey, a little too rough around the edges, sharp like a dull blade digging into your side in the way there wasn’t the adrenaline of being cut, just the annoying digging in your side. He was like burning rubber ; loud enough to catch your attention, usually obnoxious, and usually made you sick by the smell. You could recognize him anywhere, and when you could avoid him, it was relief, and irritation & a headache when you couldn’t.

But every kid gets lonely, and almost every kid tricks themselves into thinking about things in ways they’re not.

Barkovitch was the kid sending store-bought Valentine’s cards that never led back to who sent it after one too many mocked him for it, one too many went looking and turned back when they found the answer, one too many. ━ so Barkovitch never writes his name, barely writes much at all, uses practiced handwriting to keep it up in the air, unrecognizable, but sweet. The kind of Valentine you’d always wonder about, the kind of Valentine that meant something, if only because you didn’t know who it was from.

One year, he went looking in places he shouldn’t, and he saw someone that burned a little too bright for him not to stare a little too long. He wasn’t stupid, even if you could argue otherwise, he knew the kind of kid he was, and he knew that who he was wasn’t the only issue. People aren’t meant to be like that, you know, at least that’s what he was told, and so its what he knew. kids only know what they’re told, so he looked, never touched, and one year he sent that lighter a Valentine come February 14th. He spent the rest of the year watching like being told staring at the sun makes you go blind makes you look longer, even if all it was was chlorine swimming pools & sitting alone at lunch & knowing him but never knowing him. For the rest of that year, he stared, and never got caught, and that Valentine laid untouched in that desk for the next 2 odd-years. Looked, never caught, and under a stop-light in a cold passenger seat of a beat up car on a young enough morning to still nip you in the throat, Barkovitch wonders if that hotshot ever thinks twice.

Probably not, he decides as it turns green, probably not.