Friday 28 September 2012

Tuesday

Tuesday was a strange day. For the first time in weeks I felt as if my whole life was a mistake. A wreck. I was a wreck upon a vast and lonely beach that saw no other life. I moved around the house dragging the seaweed behind me, plucking barnacles from my side. The wood from the old boat of my skeleton was still strong, though, despite its weathered, darkened looks, its splintered touch. And then I turned the page in my diary and saw the remembrance. You had died before seeing me again, just like with your own parents. You were old, yes, but no amount of time and years would have improved our understanding of each other. 

Saturday 8 September 2012

Traffic lights

The man on the bike thought we were laughing at him. He rode on ahead, looking back at us every now and then, talking. We walked on, not sure whether he was talking to himself, or to us, or to his bike, or to an imaginary friend. I am not being facetious, some of us have imaginary friends and have good conversations with them. It's just that some of us also restrict those conversations to private places rather than public ones. Turns out he was talking to himself, but about us. We had simply looked at him before crossing the road, because we didn't know if he was going to turn into that road or not. He took it as an insult. He waited for us at the traffic lights.