Triptych

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{Circles}

It was by accident that you found yourself meeting the marker that symbolised a circle. Anniversaries, birthdays, the recurrence of your losses. You don’t like numbering your days but when you do, the wasted ones that fall away are lessons you needed.

Time has wound itself back and closed the loop you had been lost in. It was an anomaly. Tangled up in something new and beautiful, pause and take cognisance of how far you have come. A thousand soft mutterings of gratitude rise up, joy gripped by fingers that clutched at the hairs of joy.  Happiness was here, in those unexpected places. The cul de sacs you did not dream of wandering and avenues you didn't look at befoe. Here was far away from him, finally. Goodbye is a sweet relief.

He had called out to you. Of course, he had on this day that meant more to him than it ever meant to your reluctant heart. He strained for the last hint of softness from her summer soul and was given a cool pebble. He needed to swallow those rocks he had piled on your body, in his rivers of tears. Wash the chambers of your heart and rub bleach into the walls, where it had grown dark and smoke stained.

There are more pressing concerns that wait in draughty corridors and in coffee shops that smelled of cinnamon. There were untold joys waiting for you that seemed unfathomable. Take delight in the unknown form they will take. Leave everything else behind.

🌓

{Those parts between}

I know that my mind is a wild tangle of far too many things at once, and you shouldn’t feel burdened with the task of untangling them to lay in straight lines. Leave them be, in the knots and twists that I enjoy running my fingertips over. I don’t mind the tangles, the way you don’t mind the curls that frame my eyes softly. I know how I can seem all the time. I run the risk of being a little too much, which is also ok.

Of course, I know how it comes across, it can seem that I have spread my heart out far and wide.  That the embers of my soul have dappled many faces with soft light. That the space you occupy between my ribs is a waiting room that you might soon be asked to vacate. Don’t misinterpret this seat you have, it is not a proposal of continuity. It is merely where you are. You don’t owe me a seat between your sternum and next to your lungs.

Because people like me give out that sort of affection, it seems. The kind that seems to wash over you. And the question arises about whether this is how I am with everyone. I know how I can seem sometimes. That my heart overflows with buckets of empathy and nostalgia and that the cool relief of practicality does not often grace me with its presence. It does, sometimes.

But do not misunderstand my affections, dear.

It is that cusp on the edge of not knowing and knowing everything that intrigues me, despite my tendency to ramble down long paths of naval gazing.  I want to know, although I seem to forget to ask the questions that need asking. I know I can be a thunderstorm of words, baring my soul in that casual way that I hope you know doesn’t need reciprocation. None of it requires reciprocal action. I am surprised at how content I am with this, as it is. The faded lines that could be here or there. But it leaves so much open to misunderstanding.

Because I know how I can seem, and truly it is far simpler than that.

  🌑

{Futility is a Loop}

You are ribbons of satin braided into my hair and tough sinew caught between my teeth. Taking up space in my lungs, tracing the outlines of my dilated pupils and the thought that comes when the world goes quiet. Don’t mistake my softness for emotions that should not be there. I can see the form you take and it is terrifying beauty.

Just because kindness is an unfamiliar daisy, growing through the pavement cracks- it shouldn’t be seen as more than it is. Misunderstanding my affections would not bear the fruit you think it would and I seem to misunderstand you all the time.

Retracing my steps, descending from the mountains- I misunderstood you at every turn.

I must run the frayed ends against a flame, cauterise the wound and try not to salt it with tears. Sew the edges up again. Close the loop because it is one of futility. Go on, forget, move on. Why didn’t you run sooner?

You are right to flee. I am a force of nature. But by god, you were a magnificent tragedy too.

Required Reading

There are inky fingerprints across my soul and lines of poetry tangled between my arteries. I firmly believe you can gaze into a person's soul by knowing the books they love, but there are books that should be required reading for everyone. In the same way we recommend our favourite restaurants to   friends so they may taste something amazing, there are books we need our loved ones and the general population to consume. This shared consumption is so precious, to know that someone else understands those feelings when they read that book you love.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the amazing books out there, it's a very personal one crafted over time and rereading. Vitally, these are books I would recommend and excludes the books I could not impose on other people, the strangely serious or farcical short stories that are delightfully ridiculous. These are the ones that spoke to my soul in a way that is accessible.

These books aren't ranked by importance and I scrambled them up anyway to avoid my very obvious favoritism with books. 

I'd love to have your Required Reading list sent to me, via Twitter (@SuvaniaS) or below in the comments. 

Anyway, on with the show and happy reading! 

1. Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J Ryan Stradal 

This was a recent read and it swept me up and took me on a journey. An excellent narrative with characters that reached out of the pages to convey their lives, pain and their multitudes. Initially it seems to be comprised of isolated and tenuously linked stories but they all begin to weave together to a touching finale that left me smiling. It centers around food and chapters divided into dishes that hint at the tantalizing lives of the people within the novel. I appreciate books that allow you to figure out what ties connect people and let you see the formation through time and fate. It's in this list because I think it's the sort of book one needs on hand when your soul deserves a meal of well written fiction.  

2.  How To Be A Woman- Caitlin Moran 

After I read this, I sent it to most of my friends. You don't have to be a feminist to read it but by the end you really find yourself embracing what it means to celebrate being a woman. Be warned there are some ribald anecdotes, but on the whole she addresses everyday matters from puberty to buying a bra to dealing with heartbreak in this refreshing acidic voice that draws you in, as if a friend was confiding in you. Ok I need to repeat the warning that it can get a little "explicit" in terms of the language used for more sensitive readers. This is my disclaimer because I don't want a text saying "There was a bad word.... Ok a lot of them in Chapter 3, Su, why didn't you warn me?". 

Moran bases every chapter in a time in her life and it's painfully honest. It's not some soppy self help book or an actual guide to anything except the inevitable realisation that you are a fabulous creature who has the same hang ups that other women have. It's an inadvertent guide to everyday feminism. It's great. READ IT. 

3.  Why We Broke Up- Daniel Hardman

Plot twist- Daniel Hardman IS Lemony Snicket (look it up) so I hold this teen breakup novel above all others (Sorry, John Green). 

I found myself increasingly disenchanted with a lot of young adult romances because I could see how things would pan out and to be fair, I felt that the premise of this book was poignant and exactly the intensity of emotion one feels when ones heart is broken. 

The structure of the book was poignant. It's in the form of a box of things, Min ( the protagonist who represents the antithesis of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl we are so often given in YA novels) is giving back this to her ex and she accompanies this box with a letter that explains why they broke up. The thing about Min is that she's the best kind of quirky: self conscious and not unbelievable in the least, as most recent female protagonists are in a way that troubles me. It was real because falling in and out of love happens to us all, and not a special snowflake with an overly elaborate backstory.  I felt that the whole book captured that at the end of it, a relationship is just a box of things that narrate something so much more than it appears at first sight. 

4. One Hundred Years Of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez 

There's nothing I can say that hasn't actually been said about this book. It's a saga about the Buendia family that weaves in masterful elements of magical realism. And Márquez (Who wrote Love in A Time Of Cholera), captures a rich tapestry of South American history through the eyes of his characters. A quick note would be that there are lots of the same names repeated/carried over/ used for different people. It's a mission to keep track of who is doing what if you aren't careful. 

It illustrates allure of wanting to establish a perfect society and break from restrictive tradition and the painful curses that trickle through generations. It was recommended to me and now I will recommend it to you because of the  hypnotic way you suddenly find yourself three chapters down and having no recollection of anything besides the page in front of you. 

It's a feeling. Not a novel. 

 

5. A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket 

I used to go to the library every Saturday and over the course of a few months (that is waiting for someone to bring books 11-12 in) I finished what remains an amazing set of books. It's written in a way that respects the reader (most likely a child). I loved that, I craved that kind of expectation from a book. It made me sit up. It still does. 

It doesn't dwell on the premise that good things happen to good people. Because bad things happen to us all, and more so to those who do not deserve it.  And it feels fruitless to hope for the Baudelaire children who tirelessly strive to escape the clutches of Count Olaf and the looming mystery of the VFD. Packed with wit, unforgiving observations about the nature of good/evil being a grey area and twists that don't come off as cliched, it remains high in my esteem as a set of books. It has layers and mysteries that aren't ever fully explained. Even past the last page of the last book. 

6. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

I have two copies of this book. And an electronic version on every device I have. I cannot reveal how many times I've re-read it. If you peeled back my skin, you would find my favourite parts of this book embedded in my muscles and the ink swirling in my blood. 

I've written at length about my ardent love for the epic and simultaneously simple tale of a girl falling in love, amidst a changing world and the ever tangled web of family interferences in matters of the heart. There is a delicacy in Seth's writing, an unassuming way of talking to the reader that acts as a soft fog. You forget the immense size of the book because each sentence is remarkably simple, it's a comfort. He encapsulates human emotion so well, and furthermore- reality. Nothing is sugar coated, not love and certainly not loss. 

It's a sprawling novel but the actual events happen in a thin slice of time, the reader has stumbled into this brief moment of interconnected lives and the beauty of it leaves you wanting more- demanding explanations and pressing for further consequences.

Vikram Seth is my favourite author and I have been dying because the sequel has been threatening to be released for far too long. A Suitable Girl cannot come soon enough for me (VIKRAM SETH, PLEASE SOME OF US ARE WAITING ANXIOUSLY- PLEASE PUBLISH IT SOON)

Favourite line (I had to include this because I adore the snide humor of Amit Chatterji, one of the characters)

" 'You can't blame her,' said Amit. 'After a life so full of tragedy anyone would become hard.'

'What tragedy?' asked Mrs. Chatterji.

'Well, when she was four,' said Amit, 'her mother slapped her--it was quite traumatic--and then things went on in that vein. When she was twelve she came in second in an exam...It hardens you.' ” 

7. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery 

The Little Prince is special beyond measure, it touches my soul in a new way every time. I sobbed through the film (which was very well adapted). I will probably always cry when I read it. I wear my sentimentality with pride.

It is the book I turn to when I am terrified of growing up and forgetting. It is a comfort and reminds me to see magic in the simplest things. The Little Prince has layers, a simple story for children and an extended metaphor for adults. Read it so you can remember things you did not realise you have lost.

Read it because sometimes it takes a children's book to teach you about being grown up. 

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye" 

 

8.  The Hundred Foot Journey - Richard C Morais 

A love letter to food, family and the essence of life itself (I obviously have a thing for the niche market that is Books About Food And Family). But my favourite books are the ones that pull you in, wasting no time with frills and exposition, and this delivers that short intense burst of characters and the brevity of life. The basic plot revolves around a family who, after a tragedy, find themselves adrift from their familiar home in India and cast into stark grey world where they are seen as so different. They are vermillion in an expanse of ashy grey and the beauty of this novel is that that colour seeps into every crack. It's a quick read but marvelous. 

9. Tiny Beautiful Things- Cheryl Strayed

Where do I start? Wow, this is a collection of letters that Cheryl Strayed (who wrote Wild, which is just as searing and painful in its beauty) in her capacity as Sugar in Dear Sugar for The Rumpus. It's not an advice column, you can't reduce it to that. It's a collection of people who have desperate questions about life and their pain and reconciling that pain(explicit, angry, shattered pain) and she responds with raw emotion and a perspective that partly answers those questions but also includes very personal insights and experiences. It is a brutal and magnificent collection. It hurts to read at times but it is necessary pain. There were some letters I couldn't bring myself to finish because I did not have the capacity to process that level of emotion and hurt. 

I found myself moved, again and again through each letter and suddenly I was not the same person I had been when I had started reading it- and if that isn't the point of everything then I don't know what is. 

10. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy  - Douglas Adams  

Douglas Adams crafted the perfect mix of wit, adventure and an existential crisis waiting to happen in this book (and the absolutely wonderful sequels that follow after it). This is Required Reading because it's one of those books that has so much to offer. I suspect even people who don't enjoy science fiction would take away a lot from this. Arthur Dent is a reluctant protagonist who would rather be at home with a nice cup of tea but finds himself on a whirlwind adventure. It ultimately reminds us that bureaucracy forces us to stand in queues filling out forms to avoid your friend being executed as well as demolishing homes to make way for a byway and that the answer to Life And Everything is 42. Also always carry a towel and Don't Panic when you read this, dear ones.  

Happy reading and once again, please send me your Required Reading lists!!

(All images contained belong to their respective owners and none belong to me.) 

Diaspora: A Short Story

(I wrote this short story a few months ago. It was inspired by a kind of homesickness I have for the people left behind when you start a new journey. However it's fiction and I hope you enjoy it. I'm always so keen to hear some feedback or have some tips to maybe improve on it. Love Su) 

There are small, fleeting moments of beauty to be savoured when one is still and your mind is racing… Fugacious pleasures that are indulged between cups of coffee and the moments just before chocolate melts on your tongue. The ribbons of steam rising out of a shower while the only sound you hear mimics the storms of your childhood. The hum of the  train that you almost missed because you stopped to inhale the perfume that escaped the bakery door. The caress of soft cotton against your toes when you realise you are going to be late for your train. It is a moment of brief seduction that begs you to stay where you are. She did not savour them on the particular morning when she almost missed her train. She did not relish the butter melting on a warm brioche and was oblivious to the smile of an infant who passed her in the crowd. She was late and robbed of all the wonders that had been gifted to her that morning.

You see, when you are late, your mind is occupied with To-Dos. Schedules. Cold intangible seconds that pass you by, they toll …

Overhead they toll, like gloomy bells high in steepled churches. In your haste you will knock over a barely consumed cup of coffee that you carelessly left on the floor and for years to come, you wonder how that dark stain came to be on the underside of your couch. She had forgotten her umbrella and regretted it briefly when she felt the damp creep up the nape of her neck. She tried to read a book to pass the time and in that way, the chance to appreciate the dancing raindrops that moved across the window was lost too. She needed distraction from the anxiety that began to line her lungs with lead and paint her soles with cement. 

It was always like this when she went home. 

“Where are you from?”

They always asked as they surveyed her bronzed cheekbones and heard her voice that did not have sharpened concrete edges like theirs, instead that bubbled forth from roaring tides and rolling fields of green. She always felt naked when they asked this, as if some indiscretion had been committed to reveal her origins. It was very difficult to explain it to them. How could they understand her home when they had been fed on a televised diet of savannas and crouching men observing gazelles being stalked by a lioness? How could they fathom the endless riches of the hills that birthed her, when the jewels of that same soil glittered on the crowns of distant monarchs and they only saw the ashen faces of the poor gazing from the screen? They could not look at her and imagine the land she came from. They viewed her mind and brilliance as something separate from her origins. It is easier to try to run her through this sieve of perception, it is easier than trying to understand her. 

She was constantly torn between resentment and longing for home. It is impossible to reconcile her two worlds and arduous to blend into the changing environments she found herself shuffled between. Her idea of home changed. In one state of mind, home was where you went when you needed to stop wallowing in your thoughts and where you were more than just a face in a queue to buy your favourite brioches before you caught the train.  Home was where you saw familiar faces and no one ever narrowed their eyes, as if they could see you did not belong. You always belonged. Home meant laying  down your bags and regrets instead of holding them close to your side as people bump against you on a crowded escalator as you tried to find the correct train. 

But the heaviness of her soul when she returned home, when she clutched a suitcase while she boarded trains and a plane back to the technicolor world of her childhood, when she pushed a trolley at the terminals, laden with duty free chocolates and a heavy heart – it wore away at her comforting ideal of home. She would feel ill at ease, as if her body had grown out of the habits her mother taught her. Was her hair wrong? The clothes too outlandish? Could they see the caress of a lover who waited behind each time? Could they smell his cigarettes and the coffee that he sipped ebony and sweet? She stared at her hands, imagining that they would be able to see his fingers laced between hers. Her cheeks did not become tinged with scarlet because people mentioned the marriageable young men they knew, but because she felt as if they knew all about her stolen kisses in bleak winters and thawing spring. They pressed the issue, of young men with degrees and fathers who owned companies. 

She felt transparent.

It sickened her that no one asked how her studies were going. Instead she sat, listening to verbose explanations of the hierarchy at the local hardware shop that her cousin worked at (he was due for a promotion, less than a month at the job, imagine?) and how a feud arose between the neighbours because of some creeping roses or a leaning tree. She often felt yawns creeping up but stifled them promptly. News came in an endless torrent when she sat beside a giggling circle of relatives and stories she had heard thousands of times became embellished and theatrical. Anecdotes that were dusted off for new ears and tall tales that stretched for children. It was home and it was the only one she knew.

This city and its trees blurred in the rain until it was a homogeneous colourless mass that slipped past the train. The pewter skies would stretch out here, the damp creeping quietly to her toes if she wasn't careful on rain soaked pavements. She wore hats and scarves and crinkled her nose at snowflakes that brushed her cheeks, they all were unfamiliar.

Her childhood was a mosaic of her grandmother’s turmeric stained fingertips that reached to smooth stray hairs, her mother's anxieties ached for her child to rise above and her father’s books that scattered her thoughts and dreams to far lands and impossible dreams. 

She longed for them when she smelled onions and tomatoes frying in hot oil with exploding mustard seeds and she felt torn apart in secondhand bookstores and her tears welled up when the she stared at the glowing screen that lit up with smiling faces and news of a cousin who got engaged or a nephew who was born. There are threads that extend from our souls to join with the doorposts of our childhood. And she felt them tug at her often. 

Home tugged when the drunken slurs thrown at her were geographically incorrect. “I'm not from Pakistan or India. I can't go back to somewhere I haven't bloody been.” She would shout back, knowing that it was useless to try reasoning with the cruel and damned. How could she try to lay claim to the land that even her grandparents didn't know, a land alien to all living branches of her family tree? They tilled this land, their cracked heels darkened with soil from Africa, a rich red that healed into their skin like a tattoo. They would scrub at their feet in nightly attempts to scour out the marks of their labour. They built houses and had children and thus a community grew from the scattered  men and women who could not find solace in the land that nursed them. Their children would not taste her milk and eventually they would not be able to trace the rivulets that ran from their origins. She could not even trace the village her forefathers had lived in. She had tried. 

It was a communal existence that prior generations had lived in, a melee of sisters reprimanding each other's children and doting on their brothers who visited with their young brides and children who raced barefoot. They built temples and breathed tradition into each child, hoping that their words echoed years after their deaths. They muttered thanks to their gods for good fortune and they wept together when the tides of fate did not work in their favour. Her family repeated complaints, many  yearned for days past when long visits were common and far-flung family who remained close despite the fading bloodlines of connection. People were adopted by love and remembered in kindness, always. Children raised by a spinster aunt in the summer holidays, who would leave their own children with her later on. They built lives in this place with cerulean oceans and thorny trees.

They were all once foreign in Africa too. 

She reminded herself of this when home tugged and loneliness ebbed at the cavernous depths of her soul. Some hundred and fifty years ago, they had been alien and alone. On a journey to an unknown land, no precedent set. She muttered thanks to them, to their old gods and her new one that lay adorned on the end of her rosary. She muttered this because they had dusty brows and sun scorched bodies so that one day, a century or so later, a descendant could ascend into the halls of  scholarship and so another could ascend in the rankings of the hardware business and so, possibly later – someone could ascend higher than that. To work hard was to honour that dust tattooed into cracked heels. To persevere was to bow down to respect the tireless women who stitched fabric in stifled factories so their children could afford textbooks. So that those textbooks paved a path for her to fly far from her home.

Your life is not your own, it remains the result of sacrifice and tireless ambition. 

As she boarded the plane, ticket in hand and passport ready, she breathed deeply. She realised the quiet life she led here would fade into memory in the weeks she stayed with her family. It was a beautiful cacophony that enveloped her. It wasn't immediate but was a crescendo that rose as the festivities drew near. And, there were always festivities to draw in a crowd that was intent on helping to cook and prepare the house for celebration. They all were tugged closer by the same bonds, the same blood.

Women were remarkably powerful in her family. They were able to endure immense suffering but could lay their souls bare, over a pile of peas that needed to be shelled and between the simmering pots of dhal and the ghee-scented toasting of rotis. Their voices rang in discordant tones that swept up any passersby and they silently assigned tasks to all present - to cut up peppers, make some tea or clear the papery onion skins that threatened to blow away with any unexpected breeze. They would curse and praise in the same way others would breathe. It becomes difficult to remain isolated among the women in her family, they engulfed you and extracted any sorrows embedded in your brows. Someone would vanquish your anxiety, no doubt with an anecdote about her husband or a wicked mother in law. They all had to be wicked, you see, it was a rule that remained as fast as their tightly clipped buns and coiffed curls that were darkened by dyes and lengthened by potions procured from a medicine man who hailed from Chennai, who allegedly cured someone of diabetes. Everyone was “Aunty”, regardless of any actual relation.

Home tugged at her when the sympathetic glance of a woman wrapped in a sari caught her as she tried to discern spices in their bland supermarket packages. When the buskers sang of a land far and bonny, even though they probably meant another rainy grey place, she felt the corners of her eyes moisten as if they knew about the melodies of the shorelines she tumbled on as a child. So when she was in this pale city of aged streets, adrift in cold supermarkets and buying food to remind her of home – she relished being able to say “Aunty” to the kindly woman on Aisle 5 who wrote down a spice shop that supplied freshly ground mixes and to the tired matriarch who ran the establishment that won Best Curry for two years in a row. They smiled because they knew her loneliness in this city. When you are alone, you cling fiercely to even the vaguely familiar. It feels close enough to home for an hour or so, as your fingers scoop up vermillion curries with naan that is smokey and buttery. 

Her chest ached when she remembered that returning home meant she would notice how her grandparents had aged, spines bent a little more, arthritic joints that did not move as they used to. An ailment that nagged and a cough that refused to subside. A new pill to take and a heart that skipped when it should pace. Hands that did not do all they used to do. Bodies that did not want to reveal the growing measures of pain that had been piled upon it. 

Her grandmother’s hands were translucent, the soft skin stretched over veins and knobby knuckles and smoothed by years of washing clothes in the crisp morning air. To hold her hand was to feel like life had rushed by all too quickly. Her small hands that sewed a life together, that darned every scratched knee and prepared the ingredients of memory. It was this that made her feel heavy when she went home again. It was a reminder of the moments that would become rare later on. She dreaded seeing each new creak and crinkle, because it bore a reminder of time and distance. She thought about this as the plane took off, it nagged her through the in-flight movie and woke her from a fitful nap. She could not shake the feeling that she had lost time with them all, time that she had spent abroad. To be the pride and joy of ones family came with consequence- it was a realisation that there were  memories she would never have. It was feeling desolation as you tried to assimilate back into their way of life after you had carved out your own manner of existence. You feel hopeless holding a hand so small, so tired and so beautiful. 

She craned her neck, peering out of the two layers of thick glass, looking down as the shadow of the aircraft traced the edges of her continent. The deserts that met the sea in the north and the ripples of gold rivers caught in the midday sun. The layered clouds that God spun himself that bore precious rains. The sprays of towns and cities that edged into focus when the skies were naked. And she flushed with jubilation when they flew over the sea as the sky became an endless blue, above and below. As the day eked on, as the hours and dreary trays of food appeared and her legs aching from the restricted movements, through all this banality, the sky remained beautiful- turning violet and rosy as the sun sunk over some unknown horizon. This same sun had never looked as beauteous in her grey city of rain and smog. 

Of course Africa is her motherland. She owed everything to it. Honour was only due to this place that had given her and so many more, a home. It gave her grandfather stories to tell as he planted beans and carrots, while she had plucked the delicate blossoms of vegetables in her infancy. She wandered through tall mustard that painted the ground a buttery yellow and the juice of sun sweetened mangoes made her elbows sticky as they ran down her arms. His voice creaked and grumbled a world into being. From his mind she learned about his gods and she learned about the gods of Olympus and the god of Moses. He chuckled mischievous young archers into existence and fashioned bows from supple branches. The only soil that he had underneath his nails, the only trees he had ever planted, had been rooted in Africa. But now he could not laugh as loudly and his garden grew smaller each year. 

She tried to capture it each time, to burn it in her minds eye and keep those trees and rows of mint and thyme etched into her. She was beginning to forget, you see, and this terrified her. Time began to unravel the silken threads of her childhood. It was less vivid with each year that passed.She was still now and her mind raced in the long hours to her destination, remembering the fragments of euphoria from the morning. She recounted each one, numbering them as if to distract from the knots of anxiety. 

She tried to remember them later when she emerged from the terminal to a cluster of somber faces lined in grey and emptied by loss. She couldn't quite grasp those stolen moments anymore as she suddenly felt her knees give way to grief. 

And by the time she returned to her cold flat and discovered the dried patch of coffee on the floor by her couch, she would carry the shadowed burden of loss and a box of memories she could not quite reach. 

Staring: A short story

Her voice haunted his nights and his days stretched out until he saw her again. She smelled different each time she was in his arms, however brief those moments were. She never stayed long enough. Leaving behind vanilla and spice and flowers and all the notes between that he tried to remember.  Loving her was a welcome torture. 

The numbers and letters that filled the glowing screen at his desk were a distraction until the evening. He was not usually lax but today was different. They didn't see each other often, he barely knew what she did during the day and she never seemed to ask what he did. He wondered if she cared. But he knew she could not ignore  the surges of intensity when their eyes met. Before she looked away shyly. She did it every time. 

He knew he could be so much more. To her, to everyone. If only it wasn't so difficult. He had done everything right and now he felt as if it had come to nothing. Money and power were cold mistresses when your heart  was longing for a mere second against her lips. Those lips that she often bit nervously and those lips that broke into a smile now and then. Nothing mattered except the way tendrils of her hair curled near the nape of her neck. All was meaningless if she did not have a part in it.

The buzzing phone broke his reverie. A message flashed onto the screen:

        Received at 8:19 - Hey :) Miss you We still on for tonight right?

        Sent at 9:27 - Hi. Just busy at work right now,yes tonight is still as planned. Call me when you get                                    .                           there okay?        

       Received at 9:28 - Will do, I love you. 

       Sent at 10:03 - I know. I have to go. Bye.

                                             ___________________________________

"Someone looks especially happy today."

" No, well yes. I just get happy when I see a text from him. He's back to his old self again. He made plans for tonight!"

"Everything getting better? I knew it would, you can see how devoted he is to you."

" His job is getting better, I was worried, you know? Because he was so distant during the beginning and then it got better eventually. But when he proposed it almost made sense that he was waiting for it to be stable for us. It feels right, you know? It explained away all my worries that he wasn't in love and actually revealed how he kept the proposal a huge surprise for me."

"What are you two doing tonight then?"

" I think it's dinner, with some of our friends so we can officially break the news about the wedding."

"Haven't you done it yet?"

" Just with my family and of course you. He wanted to tell them personally, they're practically his family."

" You're just so lucky. And patient! I would not last as long as you did with a secret like that."

"It's been a week, not that long? Don't you have a deadline to meet?"

"Oh crap, that's not today is it? Don't answer that."

"I would be working if I were you. Go." 

 

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The long snake of cars moved slowly in the dying light. He wouldn't be late but the prospect thereof worried him. That he might miss a second of her. This had to be love, even if he couldn't say it. Or madness, this craze that followed his heart into the dark shadows. He could face the world again after she smiled at him. She didn't seem to grasp how he immensely he loved her. 

His phone was silent as he entered the resturant, but he saw her through the crowd anyway.

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"Hi, you're earlier than expected," her voice cut through the noise," Everyone said they're going to be late. Which I expected given.. I mean it's a Friday, nightmare on the road?"

"It's hellish," he scrambled for a joke to make but came up short, "It's the agony of waiting an hour and moving slower than the pedestrians." 

She laughed and his heart soared. 

He leaned in as she stood and walked toward him. The embrace was over before he realised it began. Today she smelled like coffee and lilacs. Her hair was up and a few stray curls framed her face, he caught himself staring. "I beat traffic today. I guess I was lucky," His tie was out of place here, he loosened it and attempted to pry it off, "I'm overdressed."

"Can I help there? You don't have to take it off, work clothes are what everyone will probably be in."

 She leaned over and reached up.How could he refuse?

Everyone started to arrive and each time she stood, he caught himself gazing up at her. His phone buzzed. They were all there. They had all been there when he first met her. An age passed and someone stood up to propose a toast. His phone buzzed again. He ignored it. It started to ring, he excused himself.

The voice that greeted him was dulled by the wind that blew as he walked outside, "Hi darling, I know I'm late. Sorry. This traffic is a nightmare. Please carry on without me. I will be there after the Big Announcement however."

"What announcement?"

"Oh I'm so careless! It's.. Well you will find out soon, I guess? I love you. Will be 15 minutes, okay? Darling? Just tell them to carry on, she shouldn't wait for me because I know... "

"Okay... I have to go. Bye"

He looked toward the table again, where she sat smiling. She started laughing as a story was told to the table by his best friend who sat next to her.  It was only when he sat down that he noticed a ring on her finger.