taste of heaven

We ran to the ice cream store to watch the kids in the suits – she was four and I was six.
When father had finally found us, I was standing next to the car, holding the ice cream cone I was given during the commotion, droplets of chocolate on my bare feet. He ran to Lia and took her in his arms. He kissed her and fixed her clothes; he talked to her.
I gulped down the rest of that little cone of heaven and rushed to explain.
“Father, stop what you are doing. My sister is dead.”

Signs

As we step out in the cold, hundreds of balloons are already flying above us. My friend releases her chain of balloons and we watch it go, free and red and white. It looks like a constellation in the night sky.

“What sign are you?”

“I’m a Balloon”

Literally

On the way to work I now have to change lanes to avoid hitting the workers redoing the pavement.

Kind of like saying, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.

Garage Sale

Body for sale.

Used, in good condition.  Heart broken.

Rapu

Rapu sleeps at my place at least 5 times a week. He’s not a cat or a dog, he’s human. He has a Christian name but I call him Rapu instead. I’ll never call him “babe” anyway, cause if I did I’d have to excuse myself right after to go and throw up. Sometimes, I make him promises. “Rapu, if you wake up now we’ll have ice cream” (the truth is, I will have ice cream while he will be ecstatically watching – it doesn’t matter, the promise works every time).

Rapu writes beautiful little stories, so when I first read them, instead of crying I picked up the phone and dialed his number. I was lucky that he wanted to talk. We talked and talked and we had never seen our faces though I’m sure both of us had already dreamed us waking up next to each other. When we finally met, we had both been caught up in the dream long enough not to let it pass. We decided this was a fairy tale that we could live. And we do live it.

Other people wonder. If they don’t, they are simply indifferent. No one has said anything good about us, no one has given their stamp of approval. I don’t know why. I think they wonder why we send letters to each other while living in the same house. They also wonder why we laugh so much. they also wonder why I call him Rapu when his real name is such a beautiful one. We see these things as normal. And if one day, Rapu stops sending me letters and I stop giving him ice cream promises that will be the end of my world.

On Sundays, we sit around and write little stories. He writes about me and I write about him and then we read them and smile. We also listen to fairy tales from old tapes we found in his parents’ attic. One Sunday, a friend of mine dropped by. She literally ran away, she thought she had entered “a madhouse”, she later told me. We still laugh about that.

Rapu always told me I am mad. He didn’t want to see me in case I wasn’t. I didn’t want to see him cause I thought he would be fat, short and ugly and my superficial nature would not stand that. My superficial nature committed suicide cause she had not counted on the intensity of his eyes. Sometimes, we are afraid to hug. We are afraid that we may not be able to part especially if it’s Monday morning and we have to go to work. It happened once and we had to use a very lame excuse not to go to work (we parted on Tuesday morning).

Whenever I speak of Rapu I use the present tense. I have to get over it, I know. Rapu died one Thursday morning.

Logic

“I think you like me, so I’d rather stay away from you”

“Sure, that makes so much sense. I’m sure you’ll have the time of your life with the ones that hate you”

Evolution Defeated

We dance and touch within stone walls, enclosed in this cave of soft light and hard drinks. Every touch is new and ancient – happening now, fed through the centuries by touches of ancestors in caves not much different to this. So…This is what it’s always been like.

***

Hours later, he insists: “Would you write about me?”

 Darling, of course I would … but you’ve got me tongue-tied.