The Better Times

Ingrid pushes her way through the city. Dust persists everywhere; it’s in the alleys and the streets, in the houses and the shelters, in the faces and the lips, in the souls and in the shadows. Everything is aging, even the new looks old. That scent of death colors the stifling air. The war, it’s faraway, but its pain is everywhere. People smile, they do. At times, it’s to mask that pain, and at times to forget it, but it always infiltrates their feeble faces to strike them with its coldness that freezes all expression. It’s all so bloody. That stink of bloody, bloody war!  She stops abruptly and forces herself to halt that flow of thought. She must move forward. She is late.

   In their last meeting, everything in Matthew seemed to be subdued to a definitive sense. His voice, especially his voice, it always felt so ancient, but that time, something was different. She turns the matter over in her head, yet, with all her might, she pushes that one possibility away. Could that be?  Now? No. Never.  The mere thought of it makes her cringe.

   She is now standing before his door in the motel. She knocks it, six times, each three with a different tone. It is their sign. She holds the doorknob, in her mind, a desperate wish for him to be in there. She sees him. A sigh of relief escapes her mouth carrying with it a mountain of fear. 

   He looks at her face, as though trying to bury it deep within him lest he will forget. It makes her sure now. It makes her see it all. He leaves her without uttering a word and stands by the window, the dusty horizon stretching before him.

   “You are leaving,” she says. It’s not a question. She knows. She has known it since that stranger broke into her life, he’d have to leave. It never entered her head  though that now is the time.

  “Yes.” He is still looking away.

  “Is there anyway you can stop it? It’s all about a machine, right? Destroy it then, or …. I don’t know.” Desperation leaks to her voice. “Please don’t go, not now. Stay in my time”

  He now leaves the window and looks her way, an agonized smile on his lips. “It’s not quite the way H.G. Wells described,” he says. “ I got no hand in it, my cells are pre-programmed to jump back to their original time. That’s the longest they can hold in yours.  They already gave me a hard time trying to adjust. Remember?”

  The memories fleet through her head, of a stranger following her in the dark streets. It wasn’t until she saw his body crumple on the asphalt  that she knew he was only asking for help. They were near a motel, that place they are standing in now, where she’d sneak whenever she could to attend him. He looks too different now. And it’s hard to believe it was only three months ago. But what can’t she not believe after all that he told her?

  “Yes,” she utters through puckered lips.

   He sits on the bed in the center of the room. “Come,” he says, half-whispering and gestures it with his hand. The tears blur her vision. She sits on his lap and feels his fingers penetrating her hair in rhythmic motion. Every now and then, she  lifts her eyes to see his unfocused. At times, his lips part and then close again on something he can’t find his way around. The weight of silence makes the air heavy.

  “Is it ever going to be over?” she raises herself from her position abruptly. That movement surprises him and her words leave him puzzled. She now has his full attention. “You refuse to tell me anything about your time, but this I need to know. Will the war ever come to an end?”

  He breathes deeply. “Yes.”

 “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “Will the world better?”

   “No.”

  “Why?” It provokes him deeply. It flings him out of whatever thought deluging his head.

   “Because…because we are human that’s why. We crave the scent of blood and tread on others to have it. We want authority, we want control. Nobody and nothing is ever allowed to be beyond us. They’ll kill  you because you have different color or religion. They’ll kill you because you don’t agree with them. They’ll kill you because you have more fuckin’ money. They will kill you because you are not as human as they are.  Believe me, they get very creative when it comes to inventing causes, but, they have only one cause, they kill you for the sake of having killed you.  My hands bear the blood of more people you can imagine. They’ll say that killing is ugly and put on the masks of saints who do such a great sacrifice when they take another life. But no, killing is not ugly. It’s you, being liberated of all that is human to be a pure animal with your filthiest desires moving your hands to shred bodies. You know why they’ve sent me in here? To kill you. You will give birth to a child who will cause them much trouble in the future. They want to eliminate all possibilities of him, or anyone like him to be born. Nothing was known about the father, so they sent me here to kill you.”

  The blood is flaming in his veins. The words, they sprung out of him, out of the deepest part of him, they left him gasping for air. Amidst his hectic speech, Matthew got so caught up he forgot all his surroundings, including Ingrid. She is shaking violently, her mouth half opened on silenced screams that fear to come to existence. Instead, they cause a hurricane within her heart. She collapses on the bed, and around the bed, everything collapses. Including Matthew.

  “Listen,” he wrenches her in his arms, “You have to run away. Don’t get married, or just don’t have children. It’s not you they are after,  it’ your child, and if he never comes to be, nobody will be sent after I go to kill you.”

   “And what for?” she pushes the streams of tears out of her eyes. With one arm, she frees herself from his tight grip. Her head is so heavy she swoons and he supports her. “Tell me one good reason for me to live. I went on so far, holding on the hope of better times. Butـــ” the tears thwart her, “it’s all so ugly.” She again tumbles down and sinks in her sobs.

   “Ingrid,” his lips brush hers, “you are an angel. Everything about you is beautiful and I am so ugly I can’t look at myself in the mirror anymore. They will kill me when I get back, you know that? Make me die knowing I’ve done it for a good reason.”

  “No. I can’t. What is better, to live suffering, or to die so that you no longer have to suffer?” He has nothing to say. Instead, he lets a lifetime of sorrow melt away in violent sobs.

 

   The next morning, Ingrid wakes up to a day where Matthew no longer has an existence. The air burns with his scent, and in her womb, last night, he caused the life that  will bring them both to death to start beating. 

The Dance

I have a dress the same color as angels flapping their feathery wings. One yesterday, I slid myself into it and watched as it became my skin. I was too white the sun shied away and never shone when I was there. But if you looked too closely, you would see the devil woven into my fabric.

  I twirl in the sand. Eve and Lilith, like the ebb and tide, unravel my labyrinthine heart , then rise and fall into it. I am fading into a mirage. Have I ever been real?

   The words frantically dance as they tear my brain apart. The shreds fall out of the window. I jump to collect them and I am all broken. I glue my body together  and search for them. I press myself into a insanity and it pushes me into ecstasy and they both throw me, on the shores of nothingness. I remember. My brain. I lost it somewhere along the way. The shreds repulse and break my skull. Craziness is inevitable.

Become me again and I’ll pretend nothing ever happened. 

The Stranger

The clouds were drenched with degrees of grey; the moon with cold silver, all were scattered across a black sky. Silence echoed everywhere, them, in the inscrutable horizon of ethereal figures, could hear it. Behind the closed windows, life lay.

   A pair of varnished shoes trod the ground. Wearing them, a man wrapped in a black coat the same texture as night.

   She looked like ice before melting. Her lips were painted in cheap red, her eyes in blue. Her body was easily traceable in the clothes she wore. She was old, and yet, young. Sitting beside her, was a bald man in his late fifties struggling to keep his eyelids open enough to make a person think he is alert.  The air in the bar was stale, was heavy.

    “They call us cheap,” her lips parted to say. “They call us cheap those women in fancy clothes.”

  “Yeah,” the bald man answered while resting his head on the table. He took another gulp of the beer.

    “They, those women I mean, got everything and are happy with it and we got nothing and are happy with it. Why won’t they just leave us alone? They and their stupid pride! I hate them.”

   The door of the bar opened. A man in varnished shoes and a black coat entered. There were only two people in the bar beside himself.

   “Aren’t we gonnaــ” the bald man halted, searching for air. “go?” he finally said.

  “No, not know. I mean, I dunno what else I’d like to be if I wasn’t here,” she continued.

  “What did you say? I didn’t hear that. I wanna go.”

     The man in black coat caught sight of the woman. He looked intently at her, confusion coloring his features.

   “I saidــ,”she trailed off, “Oh just forget about it. You know, I wouldn’t like to have their lives. I knew someone many years ago I can hardly remember her anymore.  She  had it and she just didn’t want it. It was all too heavy, owning everything and losing yourself in between… that’s what she said.”  She saw a man in black coat, his eyes fixed on her. She was used to men looking at her. She tilted her head the other way.

   “Did you say we are gonna go now?” the bald man asked, breathing heavily between the words.

    “No. No, I didn’t say that. That woman, she reminded me of something, we are all suffering. We ,all of us, are the same. Running away is sometimes inevitable for you to believe it” She looked at the bald man, caring for nothing more than the cup of beer he clutched. She smiled. Bitterly.  “And why am I telling all of this to you?  These are not secrets. I guess confessions also count even when the person you are talking to won’t understand a thing. So now, I am making confessions, that’s what I’m doing.” She laughed, a sick laugh, chocking on tears. Her eyes then fell on the man in black coat. He was still looking at her. She let her eyes search his face and was swept by an eerie sense of déjà vu.

   The man in black coat saw that the woman was too looking at him. He took that chance and advanced towards her.

   The woman saw the man coming her way. She looked away nervously. He lifted her face in his hands and bent to have a closer look at it. It felt like oxygen had totally escaped the bar. He let go of her face in embarrassment.

  “I am very sorry,” he said, “ you look a lot like someone I used to know…but you couldn’t be her.”

   He turned away heading for the door, the weight of disappointment obvious in the way his shoulders hunched.

   “But what if I am her?” the woman abruptly said, resting her head on one hand in a reckless manner. Challenge colored her tone

   The man stopped. “No,” he murmured as though to himself, “ You are  not her. Nothing can ever happen to change someone so much.”

      “You are quite wrong,” her face went very stern, “Life happens.” She let out another sick laugh.

     He looked at the woman in front of him and forced his memory to recollect shreds of what she looked like. There was a great similarity between the two faces but, no, she couldn’t be her. She, who owned everything could never one day be so cheap. He went away, the thudding of his varnished shoes no longer to be heard.

    She looked at the man, tracing his every step to the door. And when the door was slammed, she watched as he slowly faded into an ethereal silhouette of black in the horizon.Her eyes could no longer see him, and out of them, tears were spilled

Impure

  “Excuse me,” a little girl said from behind her, “I want to pass.”

    It was that inescapable feeling again sweeping over her. It was that sense of long lost  innocence brought by the wideness of those girl’s eyes. The distant past of laughter and ignorance pressed like a hidden wound. And now that she was  impure, it all seemed so far away.

    “Of course,” she said with a smile that poured bitterness into her face.

    She pushed her way through people and the humid molecules of air. Her voice of thought was an imperceptible susurrus transgressing against the noises in the street. Sometimes, it would be silenced altogether. She’d hold her breath and pray she didn’t forget it somewhere in the crowds.

    After getting lost within the grey concretes of streets for many hours, she bought the cigarettes and headed back home.

   “What took you so long?” her mother said, “ Do you even realize what could happen if your dad came and realized you were not home yet?!”

 She passed her mother without a glance wearing her mask of indifference.

   “And can you imagine what the neighbors may be saying right now,” she went on, “ ‘She can’t raise her daughter’, ‘Her daughter enters the house by herself at 9 PM’,” The mother so perfectly mimicked  those woman looking through the cracks of every door and whispering to each other in that wicked voice what they  saw. Perhaps it came out so well  because she was one of them.

   She entered the room and closed the door behind her. Her mother fiercely flung it open. “I’m not done yet,” she said hoarsely.

   “In half an hour, I want you dressed. Your aunt called and said she found a suitor for you. Now don’t you dare drive him away like you always do.”

    She opened her bag and got out a cigarette. When her mother wasn’t looking, she lit it and put it between her lips.

 Everything fell into an ominous silence. That silence before the storm.

   “Oh dear! I can’t believe my eyes. Oh dear..Oh dear! What have I done God to deserve such a thing for a daughter. Oh dear!” and then she shouted, “Throw that thing away!”

  She now looked her mother’s way, with a cloud of smoke surrounding her. “But you can’t make me do it. Now, I became addicted and if I try to stop, I’ll look so bad nobody will want to marry me.” Her voice was ever so calm and to further infuriate her mother, she said that smiling.

   “I said throw this thing away!”

   “You are mad because now you can’t control me. You are mad because I am not saying yes to whatever you say. Admit it,  you never loved me. Dad never loved me. You all wanted to have a boy. Why didn’t you just kill me when I was born instead of torturing me like that?”

   “I said throw this thing away!”

     “You just want to get rid of me. Every breath that comes out of me is a shame. I am a walking shame. You bring all kind of ugly men and have me sitting at one side of the room dressed like a pretty doll while deciding who you will sell me to. But you see, I am not going to get dressed tonight, because I don’t want to get married.”

    She looked around to find herself thrown on the ground, droplets of blood coming out of her cheek. Her mother had slapped her.

   Her mother stood panting and when she was able to regulate her breath, said, “You will get dressed and one day or another, you will get married. You are a  woman. That’s what women do.” She heard the door being shut.

   Minutes, long minutes lasted with her lying on the ground. Everything pressured her down she couldn’t find the strength to stand up. The world was tumbling down around her. She was not good anymore. She was not innocent anymore. Everybody looked at her that way. Long ago, she had taken off the dress of  purity to stand naked in the wind. Everybody wanted to cover her up because she was the incarnation of their hidden desires. She always looked proud in her nudity. But her mother said that women’s job in life is to get married and obey their husbands. The bitterness aroused in her soul. She couldn’t bear the weight of her breasts, the weight of her body, the weight of being a woman. She couldn’t escape what she is, She couldn’t burry it so that nobody would see it. She was their walking shame. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she saw how anger twisted her face giving it such an evil look. So many times, she had stood up confessing her impurity to herself and was happy with it. So many times all she wanted out of life was not virtue but freedom. Now, her nakedness looked so painful. Now, she was faced with the realization she always wriggled. She is a woman. Women get married. That’s what women do. In that, she found a way to be good again. She stood up and started getting dressed.

55-The Cage

Fidgeting between

Discordant tones

Lashing me             

With expectations

To be something

And I envy the space

For its inexistence

And I push a thumb

Into my ear

I can’t hear

But that doesn’t make me deaf

I peel the pictures

Off my memory

Incinerated

Before me

Light light

Flying

Within the bars of the cage

Check Out G-Man 

Clouds ـــ An Allegory

Her fingers clutched the iron chains tightly  making the blue color of veins appear prominently behind her flushed skin. She took three steps backward, thrust her feet in the ground and then, let goes. Gusts of air hit her in the face making strands of  her chestnut hair fly everywhere. A tiny giggle escaped her mouth. Ellie looked at her mother standing with hands crossed and a smile of satisfaction on her lips, waved, then prepared for another round on the swing.

   The sun was blazing. Ellie cherished a belief that they had been there for long and ought to be going away soon, so even s weariness started clambering up her bones and the movements of the swing felt rhythmic the  thrill they used to give was gone, she still insisted on sitting there and doing it over again. There was nothing else to do.

   This time, the swing went far too high. Fear took over Ellie that she would fall and hurt her legs causing her mother to shout at her. When the swing started  slowing down though, she decided to repeat it again. Every time, she saw the sky hanging up there with dispersed clouds  and her feet only inches away from touching them, a longing burnt in her heart . She kept on trying but encountered nothing except failure. She then came to the decision, if she couldn’t touch the clouds, she would follow them to where they go.

   Even though the place was clamorous , Ellie tiptoed until she was a bit far from the swing; she’d seen it done in a cartoon before.  Her mother was engrossed in talking with a friend and wouldn’t notice her absence. Ellie had thought of asking her permission but was sure of rejection, yet now, discerning her face that looked so kind, she considered going back to the swing. She was torn between what she wanted and what she had to do. Ambivalence seized her from pursuing the clouds instilling doubts in her heart of whether it was the right thing to do. And yet, she didn’t know why it would be wrong; it would provoke her mother, she was sure, and that was always simply enough to detain her from doing it. But then she thought, her mother never said to her, “Don’t leave the swing.” And never said, “Don’t follow the clouds .” So maybe after all she would be okay with it. That put Ellie a bit at ease and made her resolved on doing what she wanted.

    Her eyes wandered off to the sky, and between a cluster of clouds, she chose one to follow with ravenous desire to know that surfaced a feeling of guilt twinging every now and then.

   The entire of her head was directed to the sky. She had been looking at her cloud for so long she could describe every little detail of it if asked. It was as though she dissolved in it and abandoned every other thing that was not it. Her legs had grown weary of walking long ago but stopping was not a thing she considered, her desire moved her further then her body would.  Within her mind, she drew the world of that cloud came from and a smile broke upon her lips whenever she imagined she would be there soon. For now, time was forgotten, tiredness was forgotten and her mother was forgotten. She no longer looked at the road ahead of her, just at the sky; but a rock in the way, brought her down to the ground again.

    She had fallen and injured her knees. The sight of blood oozing out of it and the sudden pain horrified her. Maybe that was the reason her mother, as she was certain, wouldn’t approve of her following a cloud. Maybe she should have just sat on the swing. Guilt overtook everything, until her eyes looked up again to see that the cloud was slipping away. With all her strength, she stood up and continued walking. Moments later, she was forced to stop; her mother came.

    The wrath in her mother’s eyes made Ellie cringe. The moment she was close enough to her, she started shouting.

    “What the hell were you doing in here? Do you know how worried I was?”

    “Sorry,” she said, her voice shaking.

    “Now tell me, what made you leave the swing and go here? And Oh. My. God. Look at what happened to your knee!”

    “I wanted to know where clouds go so I was following one.”

      “You followed what! You are a clever girl Ellie, and clever girls don’t stay such stupid things. Clouds don’t go anywhere.”

       With these words, her mother shattered her fancies into small pieces that hurt more than anything Ellie had felt before. Through a curtain of tears she said, “They do! You told me that everything goes somewhere.”

     “Now you come with me. It’s time to go home.”

       Her mother carried Ellie in her arms. One last time, her eyes wandered off to the sky. Her cloud was not there. It abandoned her. Clouds are cruel things. Clouds mislead you and make you fall and hurt yourself. Clouds make your mother mad at you. Clouds make you do stupid things. Clouds don’t go anywhere. The tiredness was now overwhelming. She closed her eyes and slept. Deeply. 

I have been having many thoughts concerning certain stuff and thought that using this allegorical form to portray them would be the most adequate thing. Every character, thing and event in here stands for something. I'll be posting a detailed explanation later, but first, I am asking you to kindly tell me your own version of interpretation. 

Pendulum

Wise man sits on the top of a tower

Saying tears turn to pearls

Mine came crashing at my feet

And now I’m bleeding

Evil and good

Wrestled tonight on my threshold

I locked the door

Sank under the quilts and pretended

I was deaf

Politicians and Presidents

Movies and celebrities

Jewels and glitter

I just squeeze myself between the cracks

Hanging photos on dusty walls

A girl who wore pink dreams

Torn at the edges

Last seen

Two years ago

I tiptoe so I wouldn’t’ disturb

Extremes fighting within me

On my way to the candy shop

Just around the corner

Of yesterday

At the end

I am only a sack of

Twisted nerves  

The Way Back Home

At the age of eight, there were many things I had yet to learn: Earth is the third planet away from the Sun; salt consists of sodium and chlorine; wrong things  aren’t always wrong; happy endings are of stories that haven’t ended.

 Language was not one of them.

    A heavy cover of fog shrouded the place. When I was young, I had a childish notion that fogs are made when a giant sighs. So in my head, I saw a giant man resting his head against a tree and sighing. He was tired. Giants couldn’t be tired, a voice of thought interrupted. But that was something I couldn’t make sense of. Some way or another , everybody had to be tired. When dad came back home he was tired.  When he hit mom she was tired. And when they told me we would move to another country, I was tired.  

  In the fog,  I could see a faint trail of how every road began, but the ends were still something of an enigma to me. Everybody headed somewhere, that was the only thing I knew. I then looked at mom. Though she was only thirty-two by then, the skin around her eyes sagged. She cried a lot. I thought that tears drag your skin down with them; that’s why I never cried. It was years later, when my skin sagged just like hers, that I learnt, to cry, you don’t really have to shed tears.

   She waved goodbye and started to fade away in the fog. I felt a tingling feeling in my stomach that rose up to my chest adding to every breath a chill. I dragged my legs and entered the school.

   I was at a loss. It seemed to me that the fog was only in my eyes to blind me. I feared that I would stumble if I walked any further. After long minutes that felt like forever,  I summoned my power and asked about my class.

  When I entered, they had already begun. I had a petite figure, so when the teacher didn’t ask me about my name, I just thought she didn’t see me. I noticed how when she shouted, a nerve in her neck shook in a funny way. So I laughed. She then heard me.

 “What are you laughing at?” she said.

  Shivering, I answered, “Nothing.”

“Well then, I want you to write ‘People who laugh at nothing are stupid’ and bring it to my desk tomorrow”

  When the break came, I asked where the roof was and ran all the way up there. I felt mortified and didn’t want anyone to see me.

   I could see the ocean from there. Out of my pockets, I got out a small map and unfolded it. Back home, my friend told me we’d only have the Mediterranean  in our way. I asked how I would cross it. She smiled and said, “You just swim.”
  My eyes fell on the river. Back then when I used to stroll by its side, it'd looked so vast. But now, it ran down the map like a scar. 

 “Hey,” a voice came from beside me.

I didn’t answer.

“You know why Mrs. Peanut Head shouted at you?”

I then looked over my shoulder to find a boy my age. I understood who he was talking about and was interested to hear his explanation.

He sighed and said, “Will you just look at your hair,” he then held it in his hands, “She’s jealous of it.”

I was truly puzzled and had to ask him, “Why would that happen? Her hair is quite good”

“Finally, you’ve talked!” he sighed, “When Mrs. Peanut Head was a young girl, she went to the zoo and stood beside the monkey cage. They all thought she was a huge peanut and wanted to eat her. By the time the security came, all her hair was chewed. What you see is a wig.”

I knew that was intended as a joke, still, to imagine the whole scene in my head, I couldn’t help laughing.

He stretched his hand and smiled. “Mark",  he said.

I stood up and shook hands with him. “Cecil,” I answered.

  Looking at his face, I learnt my first lesson in language; that language hardly spoken by the lips. Beyond every word, there’s always a thousand word that translate according to the listener. So there is not one language, there’s a million that may share the same words.  And those that are never spoken, are the most powerful.

  I wished I could tell mom before she packed her clothes telling me she was going home, and dad when he didn’t come from work and people told me that his soul went home, what I heard in Mark’s smile that day. It whispered to me, “Home is not that far away.”

10th DoM

Shreds

Shreds

Today, on my way to work, I came across an old friend in the street. They always feel awkward, those encounters, with people you cease to know anything about. In your head, their image is drawn the way you last saw them in but then, you discover that they’ve had their own share of  noise in their life. I’d lost all contact with her after leaving the country , so it was quite a good chance for us to catch up on what we’d missed. Our short conversation would have been perfectly normal for two people seeing each other for the first time in years, if not for the remark she made before leaving.

“You look so changed,” she said.

    When you wear eyeglasses that have a mud  stain on one of its lenses, there is not a thing you see that is not colored brown. That was how her words seemed to add shades of feelings to my day.  I wanted to ask her what she’d meant but something hindered me from it; perhaps I was afraid of what the answer might be. And perhaps, I just didn’t want to know.

    My first day in this country, everything was so shiny I had to cover my eyes so they wouldn’t be blinded. But it was never that sort of light the sun emits, it was more like the luster of cold metal. And as I came to know, nothing in here had a hint of life about it. Sometimes, I felt the coldness clambering my bones deep in summer and had to clutch the quilts tightly.

    It took me quite some time to learn their language. Before that, I made a hobby of guessing what people were saying. I made imaginary scenarios that made no sense giving myself a good laugh. But then, it constantly reminded me of how far away from home I was. I’d then throw my head against the wall and look at the moon. It sure was the only thing that still looked the same in my life. Now, I could talk their language but had I lost myself in the process?

   I had not asked  her about home. It slipped out of my mind, I kept on convincing myself. But how could such a thing be so easily forgotten? I rushed to my room rummaging the wardrobe for something, anything, from there. A small mirror fell on the ground and broke in what seemed a dozen pieces.

In all these shreds, I couldn’t see the girl I recognized as myself. 

Color Blind

I drew and you wrote.

   I loved the fluidity of charcoal as it stained the stark white pages with pieces of my mind. Sometimes,  lines would  hug and intertwine forming shapes; quite a lot, they were only shredded pieces of dispersed thoughts. I was more comfortable with the ambiguity  of grey mirroring the mess of me; we both too unruly to be tamed by names  You loved the definitive sense words gave you. In your world, everything had a meaning and whatever had meaning must be a word and what’s not a word is nothing. I was your only exception as you were mine.

   I argued that the first people used pictures and drawings to communicate as scientists found on the walls of caves. You laughed and said that it’s what got them in there in the first place; civilization  began when they started using their tongues in something more useful than making meaningless sounds like animals do. I just shrugged and said that it’s boring to have a word for everything.

Two people couldn’t be more different.

You listened to Debussy and Beethoven and I to KISS and Nirvana.

You wore Armani and I whatever I found not coffee-stained.

You ate at fancy restaurants with a large group of friends and I in the streets observing people from afar.

You planned everything ahead and I just did whatever my twisted brain would suggest.  

You were a day person and I a night person.

You were a communist and I an existentialist; which was, besides shapes and words, one of the things we’d always argue about. You thought that existentialism would mar any human progress because no person could make it as a single entity.  I thought that communism was just another way to cancel individuality using the façade of equality, which, of course applied to everyone but the governor who would suck all the money.  To you, communism was the promised utopia and to me, existentialism was how my life went on.

Two people could not be more different

Yet,  we had one thing in common.

We thought the only reason love made it as far as the twenty-first century is to make millionaires out of movie-makers. We both didn’t believe in love.  Each had a different view . You  couldn’t define it and I’d never seen it lasting. People get married, some get divorced and others stay together for the wrong reasons. Here’s the thing about love, it’s a feeling, and all feelings are like candles. Love being a violent one, the candle melts way  too fast. Soon, you are left with wax without a blaze, but it's enough to remind you that something used to be in there.  So you hold on, wishing for that spark to light you up again. But it rarely ever does.

    We weren’t what you’d call two people in love. To you, I was a special friend because I was different from the other people you knew. To me you were a special friend because I knew no one at all. But, curiously enough, I knew you.

   Many times you suggested to introduce me to the people you knew but I’d always refuse. I didn’t belong to people, or to anything really. I lived in many places, traveled to many countries, inhabited many houses, yet, I could call none home. I was too trapped within myself to ever see anything from the world but a blur of colors. You once joked with me calling me a misanthrope; it was when you saw that I didn’t smile that you realized it was something serious to me. I often thought of it, and came to the conclusion that I didn’t hate people; I just didn’t care for them.

   When I first showed you the stuff  I ‘d drawn, you said I must be color blind. I guess you’d thought I painted with a brush and used an easel. Your statement, though,  had some truth to it; I could see all colors only in shades of grey.

    I was curled up in bed, rather paralyzed in it. It was not tired legs that led me there, it was a heavy heart. I cried. I hadn’t done so in a while. It wasn’t relieving like they say; tears dragged tears and soon, my eyes were too blurred to see the light. I was twenty-five, empty, and alone. I didn’t want to die like this. And I didn’t want to live like this either. I only fitted into my skin, where my grey soul poured, happy for having a cover in the color of glistening masks and thickness of  a shield. It hurt, I won’t deny. Sometimes, the shield was too heavy  and sometimes, it made my lungs close in. Yet, it was the best solution; I was too fragile to last in a world where things didn’t flow the way charcoal  did on paper. I wanted to skip those minutes soaked with sadness to more benign times; and then, all I could see was you. I’d been considering it for quite a while now, calling you. I wanted someone to get me out of here and you happened to be the only someone I knew.

  Half an hour later, at 3:20, you were standing at my doorstep.  

   One of the things I loved about you was how you knew it wasn’t quite easy for me to talk about something painful. So, like what anyone would do, you didn’t just twist your face in pathos, ask about how I felt, and started the whole life-is-good crap. You commented on how my flat should enter the Guinness World’s Records for the most chaotic thing on Earth. I answered that chaos is complex order. You didn’t understand me so I had to explain: Chaos is a word created by us humans as to define things we couldn’t see the pattern of. Everything in life follows an order. Things ‘randomly’ thrown around in my flat were a result of my state of mind. Thus, it was actually mirroring the way I felt in its own complex pattern. When we ‘organize’ something, we are only creating simple patterns for us to be able to follow; and me being the farthest thing from simplicity, it wasn’t strange my flat being like that. You replied that it wasn’t okay for me to live in such a zoo then create a philosophical theory as an excuse for it. You then threw a bag  lying on the ground and said it wasn’t you doing it, just your state of mind. I’d been feeling more like a zombie for the past few hours, but you knew well how to provoke me; mocking my theories was unforgivable. Soon, we were hysterically laughing while throwing everything found on the ground at each other.

I tripped and fell on my head.

    I must’ve blacked out for few seconds. When I opened my eyes, everything was literally a blur. Soon, I could make things out. You were lying right beside me at such a proximity I could see every little detail in your face. We’d never been that close before. And there were your eyes, without the glasses for the first time, looking into mine. I could see you then, clearer than ever and I could tell you saw me too. Your breath brushed against my face speeding  my heartbeats. It was an awkward moment, we weren’t used to feeling like this. But that’s what made it beautiful. I knew that right then we had the same thought buzzing in our heads: we were not just friends. I was the one who spoke it out asking what exactly are we. You answered that it’s boring to have a name for everything.

No two people could be more different.

That was what we’d  thought.

Sorry for slacking off lately!

Nothing Makes Sense

We're heading for that one-way trip paved with our regrets.  Really, it just doesn’t matter….we are somewhere else now. Or does it? Tears carved the shape of your face.

Stranger, before you judge, do you know my name? To you, I am pretty clothes above skin below twisted thoughts imprisoned by cranium beneath a face.  Open your eyes to see, but not too wide; the truth will have you blinded.

Hear beyond the words, reach out a finger and trace the lines twisted into a brain molded into me who is talking to you what falls on ears  blocked by lies.

Curiosity killed the cat and to stop the harm we are now shielded by ignorance disguised in what makes sense but the truth is: Nothing really does. Lose your mind and be free.

The tunnel sinks in darkness and we can’t see through that  thing they call tomorrow . Let them decorate it with their fanciful thoughts that will be pulverized by the sun.

 And we are hanging on a pendulum swinging between hoping and hurting and not hoping at all. It’ll just hurt anyway.

Shields of Silence

I watch the night’s sky graying with black clouds following their invisible trails to evanescence,  ghosts of a time that is no longer there and let my mind wander away with them.  Occasionally my  eyes fall on a blank page imagining a chaos of spilled ink on it. Between my index and middle fingers I  toy with my pen and from time to time, I let it draw words on the paper but then, I tear it and start anew, staring at a stark white page. It’s been hours and I still don’t know what next to write.  What is her name going to be?

   She feels every eye scrutinizing her.  “What’s your name?” The teacher asked. They all want to know. With each minute elapsing , a daunting pain hunts her young heart. Finally, the teacher tells her to sit down, but at that second, her voice finally escapes her lips. “Drew,” she says.  Silence. Everyone laughs. She said her name the wrong way and now she has to be trapped in the echoes of it being imitated by the other children. Listens. She listens. But she cannot bear it anymore. “They all hate me” They all hate her. Rage is building up fringed by her shields of silence, but then, it evades. “Stop!” She yells, “Just stop!” She runs out of the class, slamming the door behind her.

   At the end of  Drew’s first day in middle school, two things happened: She got punished for leaving the class and she earned the name “Drew the Whacko”

Drew. Her name has to be Drew. She is Drew.

   When I hear the sound of footsteps thudding, I hide the papers under the desk and manage to slip the pen into my pocket. Matt must have woken up. He says good morning. Then, I find myself  within Drew as the next scene gets written within my head.

   Years pass by. Drew is now married. She stands silently watching her husband as he gets dressed knowing  too well what his destination is going to be. Creased, in her hand, is a note she’d found the other day forgotten in one of his pockets.  She can face him, tell him she knows but.....

Matt’s cell phone rings. I move out of the room as fast as possible in order not to hear.

He calls me on my out.

“Drew,” I turn my head, “Can you please wash the black suit? I am having a meeting tonight”

  Yes Matt yes, it was in the black suit that gave you away. Her name is Jane and not James, like you are calling her in front of me. And by the way, I know you are not going to any meetings because you were fired two months ago. But you think I am Dumb Drew that’s why you find it so easy to obliterate me and talk to her while I am in the room. But you are right, I am dumb and stupid. I wash  to you every night the clothes you stained with her so that she can see you as beautiful as can be, while all I deserve is  you in your dirty pajamas. I cook and clean to save her the effort of doing so. And of course I have to pretend that it’s all alright treating my heart like a stone. But Matt, I won’t be the one shattering the peace of our family. I will have to wait. I am the one you love. I am the one you come to at the end of the day.

  When I am done, I hurry to my story. Drew faces her husband. He confesses but also tells her he can’t be with her anymore. He leaves her and all she gains is regret for shattering her shields of silence.

10DoM Post

New Skin

Click-Click-Click

Her beige shoes trod across the winding road. Faraway, there were pizzas and waiters. The place teemed with them walking swiftly not looking at anything in particular. They frowned in concentration with a Herculean effort not to drop the trays.

She walked starring at the tiles and listening to the Tick-Tick-Tick of her shoe.

Big tile. Small Tile. Big tile. Small Tile. Big Tile. Small Tile.

Tick-Tick-Tick

Tears hit the floor as her hands froze on the doorknob and her lips pressed into a thin line. She tried to imagine herself,  a figure standing in there with flushed cheeks and empty eyes, a huge lump rising in the throat.  But that looked like someone else. Her features lost their distinction as they drowned in the whirly sameness of days.

Wake up, survive, sleep.  Wake up, survive, sleep.  Wake up, survive, sleep.

Vrrr-Vrrr-Vrrr

    The voices in her head went dull, echoing the mechanical roars of the car motor. Her mind was an immaculate reflection of the world seen by those tarnished blue crystals, free of her vision, free of herself. The sun rays slanted across the black sky and spread until there were no traces of darkness. Yet, in her inner mirror she  saw where they resided, lurking right beneath the surface of the days. Days were masked nights. Nights were perpetual. The twiddling autumn leaves that flew in the far horizon were never free; the wind propelled them to the dead ground of her thoughts. And now, she was running away, peeling away that person’s skin she came to recognize as a self she no longer wanted.

Hush!

Listen to her tears fading away…

 Imperfect Prose Post 

Hold The Rain

As I sit waiting,  I close my eyes and let the whishing  sound of leaves paint thoughts within my head similar to those I have at the eerie minutes before sleeping when reality and dreams mingle and you can’t tell if you are awake. I feel the dust beneath me curdling. Seconds later, the train arrives and it starts pouring. I open my eyes to see you smiling, “It’s time to go,” you say. I carry my bag with one hand and with the other, try to hold the rain. It always slips away.

I press my head against the window. The moon is a crescent….it’s smiling  at me. My breath falls on the glass and my eyes dart towards the seat before me where you are sleeping. I can see the air coming out of your nose. I draw a smiley face. With the sleeve of my jacket, I erase it and draw something else.

I hear your keys opening the door and  scurry to it. Panting, you enter. I let my arms circle around you. Noticing  how much weight you have lost I smile and say, “Finally, a diet has worked!” I feel an abrupt shiver running through your body. I look at your face and  see a smile, too wide… too peculiar for it. “Yeah,” you reply and start  whining about the heat. I don’t remember this until later.

The silence of your breaths still my lungs

 I enter the train. Through the window, I see the moon, smiling from last year. I want to change it into a grimace but it won’t go upside down. I sit on the empty seat before me, and it’s still smiling. Tears escape my eyes. I was too stupid, life was never  laughing with me, it was laughing at me. 

Happiness is the seconds you hold  the rain.