PROLOGUE(her voice).
don't part your lips in speech, my love
just stare at me
and grasp the picture
of my hurt.
do not weep, my love
for that will make my heart bleed.
be joyous and
let me take your hurt.
i can feel your heart now,
and it doesn't beat for me.
but let my love not be irrate
by my words now:
have i always been a silly game,
that you played for cheap peer score?
can you look at me again
and think of love?
don't tell me yes or no,
just show me through
the stare in your eyes,
just show it.
i know my love drowns you,
it doesn't set you free.
but just show me this and
you will sight your name in my eyes no more
I'm sorry for being the coward that I am. This is what you'd say if you ever see her again, you think as you fiddle with your laptop in the stillness of the night. You are sorry for going back on your promise that night, for bolting out of her life without looking back, for being the total runner that you are.
Her name was Deborah but you called her Debb. She was 23, and had only graduated from the university a year earlier. Fair and tall, with firm breasts. She lived with her grandfather, an old lawyer with a wilderness of grey hair, and a male cousin who never liked you.
She didn't know what to become in life; for some reason, and it always eluded you, you found it endearing. Whenever you asked what her dreams were, she'd say, I don't know. I just want to live now.
Her days were spent between surfing the internet, in search of hairy puppies--and thanks to you, the only one she ever owned isn't breathing--and applying excessive make-up on her face. She would dab her face with brown powder. Then she would draw tick dark lines on her shaved eyebrows with eye pencils such that she looked like a perfect doll. She would then paint her lips a crimson red, like a vampire yanked from the luxury of sucking blood from the neck of a prized victim. She would purse her lips, crushing them against one another to obtain a perfect blend of red all over. Whenever you asked her why she needed all that make-up, she would laugh and say, I want to catch a big fish!
Some days, when she wasn't complaining about seeing you kick her in her dreams, she would scribble some words into her brown-cover diary, the one she got from her grandfather on her 22nd birthday. She would say, I want to be a writer and tell a story of how the desert used to be the ocean's favoured bride, and how the sun was once the fellow who made his bed on earth. But in the coming days, she would say, I don't like this story. It is not sweet. I want to sing!
Debb was like that--unorganized. But you loved her because you both had the waver of an ocean.
Debb didn't like talking about her mother, a nurse. But when she did talk about her, which was a rarity, she said nothing good about the woman who coughed her into the world. And if you did ask her about her father, she'd say, that one, is he worth talking about?
You miss her now. Sometimes, you walk on the street and sight her in the midst of the crowd, walking with that usual wavy gait of hers. Then you walk up to her, pull her by her hand and call Debb. But she is not the one. You say sorry, I mistook you for someone else. Then you walk away, thinking about her, the butterfly that flew away.
EPILOGUE(his voice)
have you seen a butterfly?
i hear their colours are no longer bright.
have you seen them fly?
i hear their wings are broken.
do they perch on flowers?
i hear they hate it now.
if we love winged butterflies,
why do we cry when they fly away?
if we love colourful butterflies,
why do we keep them from taking their
colours to the stars
and painting our lives from above?
for what use are butterflies
without their
colours,
wings,
love for flowers
and the tenderness of their
milky body?
why do we cry when they fly away?
*END*
This is an experiment. Part of the prose is an excerpt from my larger work. Thank you for stopping by.