extra hold

frescos

worlds

beauty

i remember her driving a red ferrari

i remember her nerves done translucent by the sun

i remember the tik tik sound made by her heels

i remember her cartier shades

not fat

not skinny

olive skin and hazel eyes

spoke slowly, softly

with a voice punctuated by red marlboros

she spent a great deal of time with me

taught me life within the confines of locked doors and closed curtains

but

she would go back

go back to her two sons and husband

he was just a decoration piece

this robotic creature with muted lust fixed before the tele

sons were nice

but they despised me

its as if they knew the expanse of their mothers lessons on me

i was never confronted by them

but i was the stench in their lives

the boy outside whose house their friends would see the red ferrari

i exposed them to lockerroom rant

turned their parents into strangers

but what did i do

i was just a good host

a good student

or maybe i was just the quintessential definition of the 'other'

i revelled in being the other

besides the occasional bout of conscience

i just kept on covering every window

window after window i covered

more sheets and more cigarettes

different colored cigarette butts

one day i came across her husband at the drugstore

he looked at me

i looked at him

he smiled

said i think you know me

weird

weird construct of a sentence

we were again behind curtains that night

she said her eighteen year old had asked her that who was i

had further said he knew everything

and that dad was weak

i listened

poured us some neat

but sometimes pleasure and routine defeat self proclaimed consciousness

sometimes what is right is spun by what is necessary

sometimes being together

being together against all odds is necessary

18 x 2 =36

mathematics even doesnt add up

i went up

carried on up the khyber

and unlike those timestained last pages of a novel beset by tragedy

her life also went on

silence and routine were a refuge

and

and

refuge doesnt always need to be correct