From the bottom of a shallow heart

The time has always been late. The voices alone change. The conversations follow the voice.

This time it will be different, I promise myself.

No more tears and no more crying. No more giving and no more taking. Because his favorite answer is no.

But he has to ruin it all. As always because I hate taking responsibility.

Irises that do not watch the rain through his uncurtained glass windows. Darkness. Everything is forbidden entry into his life.



His voice from far across where it's been raining continuously for a night and most of the day, follows a pattern. Of a song I wish I didn't love so much.

"...Parsley, sage , rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a sweet love of mine."

My mind refuses to accept what he has given. His voice which sings the unused words and suggests of an intimacy that perhaps never is. For me. The possibilities of assumption tempt me. He sang it for me.

No. I'll borrow his favorite word.

The simple life

His fingers don't fumble when they open my clothes for the first time. I pretend his expertise doesn't bother me.

My icy cold fingers for once I hope don't write a story. Better still, he doesn't read.

The weary fan that repeatedly moved in same circles. How tired I am.

What would you want me do?

That's a question I never answer truthfully. I would just want to sleep. Or I would want you to run your fingers through the tiny smattering graph of tiny moles on my hand. Or just hold me long enough for me to cry.

Instead I tell him what he wants to hear. Its easier... For him to understand. And for me not to explain.

And the fan moves in before touched spaces. How tired it must be.

Finding borderland

It was a dingy hotel room. Didn't look at the curtains. Forget the bedsheets and the shapeless satins left by nameless people. The smell of antiseptic soap, the smell of once washed and many times touched white sheets.

I watch him shave. Through the half open door. Shaving, the old school method. He is like that in most things- traditional and not changing. At least I always knew where I stood with him. Outside his life. Or on the border when we had sex.

I don't care much for hotel rooms. The carpet...

He comes over to the bed I am sitting on. "Do you want to watch a movie?" he asks, taking my hands in his. I nod ecstatically.

"Dinner, movie and dancing if time permits." he adds in reckless measure, "the next time I promise."

We have sex and he sleeps. The movie plays on the television in the neighboring room.

A song of sixpence

I am very cruel he tells me.

I like hearing of personal despair.

Tell me more.

I broke so many hearts.

This is a story of personal vanity I realize with a pucker.

But I like those too. My life is often filled with other people's living.

And what happened... to all the broken hearts?

I never cared.

Typical, I tell him.

But I now want to... To measure the hurt of the past. To take stock of the loss.

What if there wasn't any?

And his look- of scornful, confident youth. Of good looks and black sparkling eyes.

And we both know, there must have been.

Smiling he tells me contentedly, I am so cruel.

Curtain Fall

It rains. In small dainty drops of virgin brides.

My aunt doesn't seem to mind. I see her talking to her cow. In cross section- through the iron bars on my window.

The orange chintz curtain, from the cloth that my uncle in one of his travels brought back. Along with his mistress. Family secrets that do not deserve to be told.

That's why my aunt must have cut the pretty cloth- the joy in shaping at least something.

And my cousin. His hands that turned green whatever they touched.

Food that were laced with green peppers. Spices of varying scents, flavors and textures. All from his garden. His garden which changed tastes to suit his mood. There was the summer of anger. The winter of colorlessness. And the spring that never blossomed.

When I came back from my travels, he asked me what I had brought for him.

No green saplings. No brown seeds. No red flowers. No earth touched roots.

The only thing that I could afford to carry was my loss. It occupied all the space there was.