My Mother

7 a.m.

The sun had started to show rather beautifully. The aching rays of sunlight fell profusely on his skin as I stood there naked, burning with indecisiveness and desire both at once. His face, an epitome of innocence perfectly hid the charring that he had tried to cover up all night by attempting to go back to sleep every hour. It had been four hours and here I was, still romanticizing him in my head.

I had been awake for quite a while, making myself some light breakfast as I hid my shame in a towel I found hanging behind his bathroom door.  I had watched him shift from the side of the bed towards the centre. His devouring occupancy made me realize my fleeting grasp on his life. I had owned his presence for one night. For one night, it was mine to hold and exploit as he lay there unaware of light years of pain that he had initiated. I knew, better than anyone, to expect nothing more but were my senses defeating me?

6.30 a.m.

For the most part, I am a deep sleeper. I used to sleep a lot when I was small. What I didn’t know was that I was only that carefree and comfortable with myself.

Nights like these, nights with girls, hardly delivered any sleep. I kept waking up every hour to the smell of the respective sweet feminine perfume, which always smelt like my mother’s.  I’d let it gush into me as I watched my lungs cringe and throw the scent out of my system almost instantly. Sometimes I would even lie in bed just contemplating about who was beside me and what she might say when I told her what haunted me. It was only to while away my time. Fruitless.

Tonight was the same.

I was not surprised.

However, I’m awake right now.  As I lie on my stomach, I don’t see her here. Maybe she’s gone.

I shift towards the centre of the bed. Here it is.

Maybe now I can sleep.  I lie on my back, for reasons of convenience, adjusting myself to the lukewarm temperature of the bed sheet which essentially means she hasn’t been gone long.

My eyes shuffle around in search of some sign of belonging. I can’t see anything.

Thank goodness.

I do speak an awful lot when drunk.

3 a.m.

He is asleep. Or at least he appears to be. His eyes are a little swollen and I can still experience the taste of his evasive alcohol in my mouth. I’m enjoying it. I’m running through his description in my head. As usual, it’s all so poetic and battered. There is a kind of unfathomable damage in poetry itself and I can’t seem to get rid of it.

Those bashful eyelashes, unusually unkempt hair, his obsession with being lousy and his dignified need for being alone; all of it appearing so dynamic in my head. It could be the middle-of-night syndrome where when you have nothing to do; you resort to glorifying the first object your eyes rest on.

When I caught him staring at the marks on my thighs, I knew this was a mistake. He was not conscious enough to treat me with ignorant courtliness and he didn’t.

“Hey, my mom did that to herself too!” he cheered. “In front of me.”

There I was, stripped of my vicious thoughts and shame, dressed in nothing but bland flesh and pretentious valiance and this purposeless one night stand had managed to make me loathe myself for one more night.

I was, suddenly, famished of company and glad that for one night I could wallow in regret with an unconscious stranger, since he had fallen on the bed immediately after, lying next to me.

I was alone, not lonely.

I had a bloodless hand to hold.

I had an insignificant moment.

I had had a crass confrontation.

I was not alone.

2.50 a.m.

What have I done? Why did I say that?

My eyes are closed and my face is dug into the pillow but I can feel the mortifying silence fill the room like a call of death.

Why did she do this to me, My Mother.