This is something I wrote earlier tonight. It's not personal, based on me, or anything like that, but I like the way it turned out. If there are any spelling/grammar/punctuation mistakes, can you tell me?

Possum Girl

She brushes her hair, slowly, carefully, brushing away the curls that were tight this morning, but that have now become frizzy, losing their softness as they dried through out the day. Others make it that way- they find it fascinating to run their hands through it, even though it isn't beautiful, or even abnormal. Still, they play with it, twisting it in different ways, changing its shape.

So she does this every day, and every morning, waking early, when the sky is still pale blue or pink, to wash it, ensuring she doesn’t wake her family, because every noise echoes when the house is asleep, when everyone is finally silent, before they wake up and spoil her peace.

The friends don’t know about the man, of course. He is her secret; her double life; her excitement in different ways; her relaxant and stimulant. He is many things to her, but she does not love him. He is simply a thing to her. But it would spoil it, for people to know where she goes. At least it’s not a hotel room – then it would stop being illicit and exciting and turn into something sleazy, something to be ashamed of. She’s not that far down, not that wanting.

She’s seen him today; the lover, the boyfriend, or the fool, the names she calls him depending on her mood, and her mood depends on the one who appears to her.

It was the lover today, the one that stroked her hair when she was on his bed, the one that pulled on and tangled her hair when she was on her knees, licking him. He caused the curls to break.

It was the lover today, when they didn’t do anything but sleep and make love and talk whispering, not disturbing the silence, feeling like it was sacred, and not to be torn, because it felt that a revolution would occur, that something terrible would happen, that they would be struck down if they dared talk above a whisper.

Today, he was the one she prefers the most, the lover.

Today, he was gentle, almost child like, and that was the one she loved.

Until he ruined it, as usual, by leaving the bed, leaving it chilly and telling her he had to leave, but that there was coffee in the kitchen, and would she mind locking his door after her?

Pretending to be sleepy, nodding at him, but inside, feeling hurt that he’s left, feeling hurt that he couldn’t be bothered to explain. She thinks back to something she once heard, that all men do is look, lust, lie, leave.

That's the order of events, what he demands from her whenever they do this. She thinks she loves him, but usually just after it’s happened, but she can’t, and she doesn’t, not really.

She knows that’s why the lover goes, why they never fall asleep together.

Occasionally, the boyfriend visits, and he takes her out. They go out to the cinema, to the ice skating rink, once or twice to the theatre. But it never seems real, and all she can think about is fucking when she’s there, or maybe making love, and they usually leave early. She enjoys the lover. She’s not afraid to show it. Not in public though, no matter how desperate, how frantic they are. She won't stoop to a back alley, with flies and disease and rubbish, no matter how low he’s willing to go for a fuck.

The fool comes out when they are drunk together, and he blurts out secrets, whilst she sits there, eyebrows raised over her vodka, looking at him, wondering what she did to deserve this man, the man who is too drunk to remember his name, but not drunk enough to pass out and stop her being uneasy, in his house, with him like that. She never knows what the fool is capable of.

When he’s playing the fool, she sometimes wants to scream at him. She doesn’t want to know he loves her – doesn’t he know that? She doesn’t love him, she doesn’t, she doesn’t, she doesn’t! But then, when she’s had too much, she feels like she loves everyone. So does that count as loving him?

Strange, really, the relationship. That something so focused on sex and fucking and fellatio and the position sixty nine can feel so right. She doesn’t feel like a whore. Does she? Should she? Her mother would be disappointed, she knows. But her mother isn’t here, and instead, a longing is, and it doesn’t go away, and so she stays for yet another day, in his bed, in his house.

Perhaps, she muses as she finishes brushing out the hair, leaving an undignified mess that no one sees but herself, because she’ll wash it into curls the next morning, it’s her routine that makes everything alright. Because she washes out the dirt, and the semen, and the stickyness, and doing so, washes out her sins, and gets rid of everything that makes her soiled. If you’re clean, surely you can’t be a sinner?

She puts the brush down, tugging at strands caught in the spikes. And she doesn’t think about him. She’s in her own house, where she always ends up after he leaves her, with the same message. She never drinks his coffee, and rarely does she lock his door. He leaves her – she doesn’t have to follow his commands, doesn’t have to help him in any way. The lover is too rare for her to help him.

She doesn’t think about him as she lies in bed– this is not a teenage love, where the lover is the one she thinks about before she dreams about him, nor the one that she thinks about as she wakes.

No, this is an adult relationship. She isn’t blind; or naïve; she knows what she is doing to him, and how he does it to her. And that thought soothes her as she finally sleeps and doesn’t dream about him, but of trains and tunnels.

Edit: taken advice from others and changed it slightly.