Drops of life

Seven a.m. at the train station with the morning paper,wrapped in a jerkin and looking at the rain pour from under the umbrella.
You pace up and down the platform slowly after an all night excursion at a disc, smell of nicotine in your hair and clothes, music still playing in your ears and little picures that your mind took while your little Chinese friend showed off marital arts skills to the sounds of thumping Bollywood " masala" numbers.
Your train pulls in, a seat near the window beckons you. However, you hang on near the door. The sun just wonders whether he should turn a little and take an eeny weeny nap before a full days work begins.
You journey begins. Speed increases. The familiar feeling sets in as you stand there looking at the tracks.
Jump.
You look away for a moment. Wonder if it will hurt. If it will cause a few scratches or more.
Windows of apartments glow with lights. The city is waking up. You wonder if they are kitchen windows. What is cooking. If the tea is ready and the bread is warm. Does the butter melt just the way you like it? If there is a happy family sitting there, all cuddled up in the rain, still in pajamas, smelling of sleep, smiling at the thought of their last dream and waiting for mummy to pass the cookies with the warm glass of milk.
You step slightly away from the door, sink slightly into the carriage.
Though there are these pretty Saturday morning moments which makes everything else seem like it is worth it, there is still a slightly unpleasent fact that you have to face.
One of those things which determine whether or not you grow up. Or so you think.
You donot matter.
That even if I have this incredibly gifted, blessed life with all the luxuries I can ask for, all the love I can think of, if I were to vanish, to cease to be one fine day, just like that, your life still goes on. You might feel the pinch initially when I am not around anymore, but your life goes on never the less.
Time might stop occasionally if you catch my smell when you open the closet door, but all in all the other 23 hours and 59 minutes will easily be spent sans me.
I donot matter.
And then you smile sweetly at this seven year old boy selling red flowers on rainy days.

Ciao stellina

The wind sweeps over her face. Over the Oakwood and grass. She finds some peace.
Everyday she would go back to his sly silvery voice coming from beneath the covers.
I want him gone. I want him not to exist. I want to forget everything that has happened to me before. I want to freeze this moment forever.
The grime, the guitar, the sweat in his voice, the streamy streets, the clairvoyance in his eyes. The music barrels within him and magic comes out to the world.
I'm falling. Its all scribble.
She dreams of all the things she wish she would have said. Only to wake up exhausted, to realise she is going to live.
Its like that classic bankruptcy moment Hemingway describes in The sun also rises. Gradually and then suddenly.
I worry about being here. About not being here. I don't have to be Freud to discover that I have the fear of rejection. That I am waiting.
When normal people bleed, they put this piece of plaster on it and just go on. I just like to watch the red trickle. Gradually and then suddenly.
Some day I know I will pay you back. I swear I will.
Thoughts trickle into nothingness. A black wave sweeps over.
Her clock is ticking. He watches her on the couch. Drawing from her last few breaths.
Claude Monet must have felt as much as he did, as he picked up his brush and nestled the canvas on his lap, where she once was.
He paints her as she lay dying. Navigating the brush as if to give her one more breath. The strands of her hair carefully, carelessly tousled.
The atoms in her body freeze in its orbits. Life slips.
And he watches, pastels still wet on the pallete.
It is scary sometimes, being deprived of your tears.
In a way you braught me back to life. You were so full of promise. I wanted the best for you in your life.
But I will be okay. And for a reason. Maybe to muck up one more life.
Its like what Maugham says in The moon and sixpence.
The protest of romance against the commonplace of life.

Stellina = star, ciao stellina is what my very wise Italian friend said just befroe I sat down to write this. Thank you, JM.