Transcendence

This was written when I was so young that I look back now in awe of how verse I was in the language of love and how complex and unexpected it can be, how painful. I curse the world for letting a teenager understand something in such a way so young but am thankful at the same time that I learnt early to look twice at something before naming it.

She sits on the edge of her bed, in her oversized shirt and her underwear.

She pretends that the shirt is his,

and that he cares about her.

He sits at home eating toast with just butter;

He’s never even noticed her.

In the shower the heat caresses her, in her mind he does.

He showers, washes his hair and thinks about the night before.

She pulls her stockings up high and steps into her pencil skirt.

The shoes are too tight, so is her smile, her hair

Pulled in a bun, and her shirt buttoned and starch stiff,

She is alien in her scrubbed skin, but this is how everyone knows her.

His suit clashes with his tan and his tousled hair.

He fixes what he can with wax and shrugs off the rest.

She nods to her secretary, who doesn't see her past the file she grips,

and clacks into her office.

The air conditioner chills her skin, sick, clammy,

Confined -

The sentences repeat themselves and she wanes,

In and out of focus, on life and something more.

He winks at his secretary; she pushes out the wrinkles in her skirt

and loses her place in the sentence.

He wastes time.

She can't breathe.

He watches the clock tick and acts busy when someone walks by.

She walks by.

He looks up because she stayed to long;

He thinks he's been caught.

He's relieved.

She's been caught.

She blushes.

Just her, he thinks and looses interest

Just me, she thinks, a fool.

He looks again, annoyed now,

Interrupting his moment of nothing,

Stealing already wasted time.

Hope is a silly thing.

Feelings are even worse.

His deadpan eyes graze over her unimpressed,

He thinks nothing.

She can see herself to easily the way he does,

As nothing.

He turns to find the glass of the window more intriguing.

She turns away, understanding.

His passing thought details that she is too uptight.

She walks away, she can't breathe.

She can't.

He stares out the window and watches the people, like dolls,

Four stories below,

She strides through the front door out to the street

Gasping,

Everything is too tight,

Her chest;

She pulls the pin from her hair and shakes it out

Spilling gold behind her,

She inhales sharply and strides forward again

Panicked, constricted,

Suffocating...

He watches the gold spill out.

He watches her step off the curb.

He watches.

The car can't stop in time;

She doesn't notice in time,

He does.

He feels something.

Shock, worry,

Pain.

It's mutual.

The car comes to a halt -

Three meters and shattered glass later.

She is broken.

He notices.

She is dying.

He knows.

He is curious but he loses sight as the crowd forms,

He turns away disgusted.

She saw him.

He saw her.

That's all she ever needed.

He went back to wasting time,

She no longer felt like nothing.

She closed her eyes and felt his breath on her face,

Imagined him crying.

He never shed a tear.

It wasn't his shirt.

He never cared.

Another man did.

But she never noticed him.