59. at last!

‘excuse me. can you tell me where the  station is?’

i stop. it’s early, sunday morning, i have four dozen newspapers on my back and then, a change of route. i pause. ‘err- the station? just walk down this road. you’ll see it in 200 meters on errr- that side’. then i look up. the guy’s about my age. i can’t remember his face, just his hair. it was straight, dark brown. and his gaze was so direct.

i heard the mumbling ‘you’re pretty’, gaze seemed unrelentless.
i smiled. how long ago have i heard that from someone? it’s always you’re beautiful from you. you’re so extravagant, my darling, you are!

‘thank you’ came out of my upturned lips, but i felt a nervous jittery feeling. he seemed so lost. could i have helped him? could i have cured the hunger for company eradiating in his eyes? no, i told myself, no.
so i said ‘you’ll find the station alright? just keep walking straight, you’ll see it‘ and i walked away. without long goodbyes, without any sense of pleasure in deprature.

‘excuse me, excuse me!‘. almost desperate, he was there again, a hundred meters on, in the wrong direction, next to me. ‘do you know the time?‘ i did. it was twenty past seven. gloomy morning.
he didn’t want to leave. he stood there gazing, telling me his friend ‘got beat up‘ and it as a ‘rough night but seeing a pretty girl…‘ and then, ‘can i whisper something into your ear?‘ i wasn’t keen – one never knows a thief. ‘if you must‘.
he saw my reluctant reaction.
so he said it out loud.
the street was empty.
there was noone who would hear.
and yet it was all so real.

‘i want to suck you out‘

and it took him so much to say it.
what was it, desire? impulse? lust?

so here i am. muneca brava. at last!

21. someone who i don’t want enough to love

resolution is still lost. questions posed, answers comatose.
and one question haunts me, a bat out of hell. 
why can’t i just say to X you know what, boy, it ain’t working, so lets just pretend that this never happened and walk out of each other’s lives. how bout that? 

but that’s a stupid question. and though i have to look deep inside myself for the answer, i know why.
i’m both cruel and wicked at times, and yet, my heart is not made of glass and his puppy eyes always stop me in my tracks of obliterating his dreams.

and it’s driving me crazy, this enforced entrapment by one single look. this fear of kicking to death someone who’s already down.
and i tried to say goodbye over the weekend, but he wouldn’t let me.
it’s like he sensed it coming, texting me, writing e-mails, calling persistently, telling me that we’ll get out of this rough patch and be as happy as we once were. he even got his friend to write me a message to ask me to give it one more shot. and tough i didn’t believe him that we’d be happy, because i never felt happy with him, it was too much effort to turn away and never look back. it was too much of something i didn’t have.

so, here i come, still in chains: never his, still not yours, tied by rules and conventionality to someone who i don’t want enough to love.
still a hunter, a white tigress on a prowl for her next piece of meat.

i may be wounded, but i’m not dead.