Mars is Falling

Lips press to my forehead and I know that I'm in trouble. A powerful man peers at me through the curtains of time and watches me fall over and over again. It is his bliss.

But he cannot see me now. Perhaps it's the twenty feet of concrete and the asphalt road between us. Or perhaps it's the people that surround him that keeps him from seeing me, from feeling the glare of my unwavering eyes.

He is smiling and laughing and everyone around him is captivated by it. His pretty teeth gleam even across the street to where I stand, I can see the magnifying charm in his smile. Yet I know those teeth bite sharp and disdainfully at any love that is too close to see past his glamour and into his heart.

A heart filled with spiders and webs that are traps and words that are tricks designed to make you trip and fall into his hate that he can secretly devour you in.

From across the street, I watch and hide halfway behind a large dumpster. The stench barely makes it through to my conscious mind or past the thoughts of 'what ifs'. 'What if he sees me?' 'What if I tell them about his truth.' 'What if he's changed?' 'What if he didn't stop that night?'

Blood red memories leak down my legs and I have to check to make sure it's not really there. It isn't. It's a phantom without a song to make a beautiful opera. A plague that devours reality and for a moment the street disappears. I'm in a grave, the dirt of my past.

He's a past life man with many fans now and I have none that I can see. I have no army to back the war that the pounding drums of my heart desires to rage in. This is a familiar feeling to be the only one who knows what hate feels like under the light of his smile and friendly antics.

My closet is empty of his clothes back at home where I should be heading, but the residuals of his hands still cling to me. All the time. Friends and relations cause my stomach to curdle and drop. The air knows why as it mimics my past life screams and the rain that begins to fall mimics my tears. I continue to stand there and watch even as the soft rain hardens and the man from beyond time walks inside of the restaurant with his fan club.

I light a cigarette, let the smoke and chemicals relax my anxiety as much as it can. It's not much. I'm shaking, less from the cold and more from the march of Mars as it falls from the sky and the fire sponsoring the smoke that curls around my face burns down to the yellow cotton filled tip.

My body decides for me. I have no choice, no words of calm and reason as I notice myself moving without looking across the New York City street. I suppose I should have been afraid, but fear isn't real in this place. This moment isn't real.

He doesn't even live in New York. I must be imagining this. It's not realistic that he was allowed out of his town. It's not realistic that no one else sees a monster besides me. It's not realistic that all of a sudden I'm a monster slaying woman. Smoky Dhumavati and Kali ma all in one. It's not realistic that I make it across the street without getting hit or beeped at.

Or perhaps someone did beep at me. I don't know. I can't hear anything, even as I walk into the restaurant and the hostess greets me.

I don't speak. I don't hear the syllables of her words, just my own heart beating and the one word that I've longed to say to him since that night.

His eyes are bright with celebrity and riddles of fortune, I'm certain that mine are the opposite and have been for quite some time, unlike his which instantly match the feeling of dullness that I carry around with me as they meet mine.

My hand is instinctively moving through my purse. I don't need to search for my weapon and I'm glad I don't because the seven other people who look up at me; the intruder, certainly would have stolen my fire and rage and courage and blind entitlement of that moment had I caught anyone of their eyes. I don't look at them.

I slam the picture that I still carry around with me down on the table. Confusion wafts through the air as the people who don't know the power of his hands pause in their fawning over him.

"Murderer." Is the only word I can say. The only word that I do say.

It's dramatic and the silence is blatant and loud and rancid.

Tears won't fall from my eyes until I make it out of the all of a sudden too hot restaurant and down the street. Eyes follow me as do the questions about me when I turn and leave almost immediately.

There is a rush in my soul that makes me feel real. Perhaps I should have let him reply, but then again, I'm the only one who wears scars from his wartime. I'm the only one who ever counted the days for his violence to dissolve and my womb to empty.

I stop a few blocks away and let the tears fall and in the sky Mars is also falling. Falling out of war and into stoic resolve down in the pit of my belly.

Perhaps it was cowardly to not allow him to reply, but for the first time in a long time, it makes me feel something other than conspiratorial fear that follows me around everyday since I last saw him.