1935

The roads were crowded for a Saturday. I watched as rush hour traffic coursed through the tar veins of the city center. From this height, vehicles looked like microbes swimming synchronized on a petri dish in collective subconsciousness. Stop. Accelerate. Go. Change lanes. Filter turn. Decelerate. Quietly the myriad streams of traffic moved beneath a blanket of white cityscape noise. Occasionally a honk blared. Every sound was made by a machine.

Just a while ago, there was the presence of someone else here in this room. A warm, living human being. There were two voices in drifting conversations occasionally punctuated by silences. There were moments in which our bodies brushed against each other’s; the brushing of a shoulder, an arm, or a thigh. In those moments, in a cold room, there was warmth. Yet an invisible wall, its presence palpable and almost overbearing, separated she and I. A wall of morality on which were writings of ideals and promises made between her and her faceless partner, things which only they knew.

“I don’t want to do something I’ll regret later.”

That line, delivered so sharply, cut the silence which hung thick in the air, like a laser beam cauterizing flesh. For a while, we sat side by side and stared out at the magnificent view beyond the window. Minutes passed. Then her phone rang; it was time for her to leave.

At the door, she hesitated before she agreed to a hug. When we did, I was the first to pull away. But she kept her arm wrapped tight around me. I felt her breasts heaved with her breathing. I closed my eyes and breathed in as much as I could the faint scent that wafted from her skin. Even though I wore a small smile on my face as a pretense that I was okay, my heart was sinking into despair, for I knew that I would never see her again any time soon. There was the minutest of moment when we broke away. I felt a compelling urge to taste her.

But I did not dare.

Nightfall.

The city center, now bathed in hundreds of tiny shimmering lights, was beginning to doze off. Still I stood at the balcony, looking out into the night, as though I knew where she was, as though I could see her somewhere out there.

29.07.06
8:06pm