the boy .

she gets on and walks over to the seat, careful not to sit on the brown stuff whoever sat there before had left. the way she holds herself makes it obvious that she thinks she’s top shit. she looks at the brown mess (it looks sticky), disgusted, and shifts a little further over. because of this, she ends up right opposite me, and i can’t help but stare for just a second. i look down at my n95 and press a few buttons like there’s something interesting going on.

a jumpy sound catches my attention, but i look down. with my peripheral vision i can see her take out her own phone. it’s pink. she glides her fingers across the touch screen and texts a reply to the message and rolls her eyes. she puts the pink phone back in her bag, but before the message tone sounds again, she removes it, checking, seemingly paranoid.

evidence .

the bloody dagger. the poisoned wine. the sun casting shadows across the floor.

a gun shot.

smoke. footsteps. latex gloves.

silence. plans. shattered glass.

the maid opens the door and screams like there won’t be a tomorrow.

a pile of clothes on the floor.

just dirty laundry?

i don’t think so.

intermission .

the one thing that’s harder than loving someone for who they are is loving someone the way they want to be loved. have you discovered that yet?

she knows that everyone loves a different way, and everyone wants to be loved a different way. but how do you tell what they want? and is it really possible to adjust yourself to their ideals?

pondering, she looks up into the sky and asks for answers. but the sun catches her eye, blinding her. dizzily, she stumbles around until she can’t bear to walk and sits down in the middle of the world.

with her hands she can feel the hard, piercing gravel. with her skin she can feel the wind and the heat.

serendipity .

she walks across the street searching for the location the guy told her on the phone. strange; she’d walked past this street a million times before and had never seen a the shop; how had she missed it? she’d touched every corner of this city and shopped in every store on this street. when the strange voice on the phone told her where the store was located all she could think was ‘how?’

but across the street she could see it now. a two metre high advertisement next to a small doorway that she knew all too well. she’d almost forgotten the last time she visited, and she never thought she’d have to come here again.

hesitation.

square one .

she walks out of people’s lives so effortlessly. one step, one second and she’s gone. they never look back.

it has always been this way. ever since she could remember.

there have been so many that have come and gone; stepping momentarily into her life, trying to make an impact; stamping away at her heart attempting to embed footprints, engrave messages, squeeze in photographs.

some of them succeed. others disappear as if they were never there at all. only a few messages remain now, after their composers faded away.

winter .

he stays quiet as she bares her soul, watching and waiting for him to say those words so they can go their separate ways.

she doesn’t know, and has never known, what he thinks, what he feels and why he has felt that way. he knows everything now. and she wishes that he would just let her be. it’s been so long since nobody knew what she was holding back.

the sun embraces her skin, allowing her to relax and smile subconsciously, forgetting for a moment what was to come.

the ending .

it’s always after midnight that it makes the most sense. which doesn’t really make any sense at all, she thinks.

the half lit moon peeps through the curtains which are too thin to conceal anything from either sides of the world. she tries to convince herself that it’s this light that renders her unable to sleep, rather than the rush of thoughts in her head.

unfamiliar with the silence in the streets, she listens carefully to all the white noise around her. the ticking of the clock and the flapping of the blinds make a rhythm that etches confusion in her mind. tick, tock, flap, flop.

left or right .

he looks at his phone, hesitates for a moment and puts it down. on the other side of the walls, she does the same. there will be no hollywood moment when they call at the same time and can’t get through because neither of them will move.

he sighs and picks up a pen to write down all the things he still needs to do. she makes a to do list in her mind, hoping she will remember it the next day, but not bothering to write it down. all these tasks, and all the lists of priorities.

and never enough time.