A smell of sulfur and a terrible yellow hue shamelessly covers the city. depression. mental weariness. crippled emotions. all are looming over the road from the airport.
Another planted bombed ravaging the silence. and only apathy is what you hear through the night. they don’t want to know anymore. they don’t want… anymore.
The sun shone earlier this morning. hours before its expected time. casting an oblong shadow of my head on the wall. decades of memory has been similarly projected here. momentary shadows that have never left a mark.
The sound of machine guns in the background hasn’t subsided yet. I could still hear it like some eerie music from a distant day. but life is as lively as ever on this day. I hear spoons stirring thick black coffee in quiet kitchens. clattering of trays and of small cups on small dishes… women readying themselves for the morning. I hear happiness swelling up like a rose bud waiting to bloom after all those years of gray winters.
Like a precious perfume bottled in crystal, packaged with care. so much care. for if it broke nothing could contain the scent of a dissipated relationship that never took place.
Like a thin film of oil on the surface, it preserves. keeps a lid on so much. things that are never to be revealed again. matters of the heart that stay – as they should – stagnant at the bottom of the bottle. small precipitates of time. seconds, maybe years, carefully settled at the depths of aching hearts.
“do you allow yourself a little time to cry?” she asked, thoughtfully.
from the life that I never had. one that I never wanted. from there, I see them passing by indifferently… banding about happiness that I didn’t know. and then a slight tinge of regret clouds my day.
she hands me my coffee with a smile that conveys a feeling of compassion, with a little bit of pity perhaps.
It irritates me.
