Fear

 It is midnight, and yet it seems the sun has just set. The night has just risen, and any moment now, my  friends shall return bathed in the orange light of the streetlamps, walking along the flickering concrete  road. There is this shade of fog rising from where the treetops meet starless sky and for the first time, I  

feel cold. The night echoes, and waterspouts escape my mouth as they rise to fly the breathless wind. Feel  this night, as shivers claim your body and feel your fingers cracking ice as they tap tap tap across the  keyboard. It is a typical night; dogs howling in the distance with the quiet whispers of something secret,  the hidden laughs of a time never to return. We are all that is left of a night that smells of your blocked  nose and listens like trucks on the highway. I will not cry for the blind stars tonight, they have witnessed  enough midnight massacres to know everything there is. 

But… 

We haven’t. So let us be free and chained to the thoughts of all the things we should care about. All the  horrors that we should do something about. Let us be us, and wheeze with tears in our eyes as whispered  wishes fill the quiet night. It has been a good day, and come morning we will have to start again.  

And we will, wasting hours and our days away watching our fingers twirl a ring I bought that day. It used  to be love once you know, the warmth of both our bodies in a loop. Funny how things without a  beginning, middle or end sort of just  

end sometimes. Now it is just a reminder, a loop that gives a headache. But I’ll wear it. I’ll keep it. Just as  I keep all those clothes that I lost as I grew, that I kept in the hopes that you know I’ll get back to you one  day. But you have to move, you need the space, and suddenly your almirah is 3/4ths empty and your  heart is unsure. It is unsure of love of the romantic kind, despite the manly lovers that have told its body  that you are beautiful and that despite the chunkiness they would stay the night, holding you until it’s time  to slip away. I’ll be left to forever watch loving strangers take off at dawn and hold down the house,  smiling for the cameras. My parents haven’t ever known and I don’t think I will tell them for how can I? I  have stolen more lovers and moments behind closed doors in three years than they have in their twenty.  How could I? I, a double agent in my own home, hiding the wrappers, and the midnight moans and ohhh  the shame. Not of giving my body away, but of the hiding. Of acting the innocent, of making myself out  to be a child. I make plans of lovers days, weeks, months in advance and think to myself is this how it is  meant to be? Losing myself to men old enough, old enough. I have yet to touch and feel touch returned by  someone I know doesn’t have to go to the office today. Instead, we’ll walk together for class, peck each  other in the kitchen. Making eggs, sausages and pancakes would be such a delight if only it meant I had  someone who would steal food from my plate. Is this what childhood is supposed be like? I boast of the  multitude of the common men that have passed through my hands, through the folds and quickening  gasps of my teenage desire, but when will it be… 

enough. 

The midnight grows colder, and a half-hour has passed. Coughs consume and the night subsumes, so let’s  get back to bed shall we? Hold your blankie close. One day, it’ll be the warmth of your lover, and you’ll  not be scared of falling asleep. Of getting caught in bed. One day, you’ll wake up and your lover will be  there with you. And for the first time in a long time, you’ll be warm in the morning. You’ll stop mourning  for the part child you realized you buried in newly popped cherries as you read this again and again and  again. Let’s take this morning again shall we?