There’s a space in my balcony where if I sit still, I’m concealed from the human race by my faithful pots and plants. They flutter—not the humans, but the plants—and whistle nonchalantly, whisper to each other and pretend as though they are not protecting a woman with profound social anxiety. If I sit absolutely still and hold my breath, no one will know I’m home, and they’ll abandon the quest, if at all they were on one. If needed I can peek surreptitiously through the oval-ish gap between the pots to assess the situation before making my escape.
Ideal for a person who has to exist on this planet—who knows what for—but remain out of sight of other humans.
If I could spend my entire life on my balcony behind my pots and plants, out of human reach, that’s what I would do.
I placed a grey rose on the coffin of my previous existence when I moonlighted as an extrovert. That was before life cracked into the before and the after, and the before plummeted into nothingness.
And that’s where I am, in my hiding place with my warm cup of coffee, at temporary ceasefire with the world, when I hear the voice I would recognize anywhere even if I don’t hear it for a million years. A voice that had smashed the stillness of my world long ago—and does once again, now.
“Hello? Hello?”
I am hit by a tornado.
I shrink in my seat and slip down as though I’m a fluid in search of gravity; my thoughtless body adapting, as always, to the needs of the mind.
Keep still, I tell my heart but the traitor is hell-bent on drawing attention.
That voice. Not so deep. Once I wished it were deep because deep voices are supposed to be sexy. And the ‘umm..umm’ in between as he thought, as he swallowed.
I pray fervently that he wouldn’t see me and that he would see me, that he would not be looking for me and that he would be searching for me.
My cowardly self eventually raises her head by half an inch to look, only to find an empty street. A deep sense of sadness washes over me. But it isn’t new, this sadness. It’s the constant companion of a life that has continued to fail me every step of the way.
I knew he was in town. I had hoped to run into him even as I dreaded running into him. And when he came looking for me, I, terrified, startled, let that door close.
I don’t understand myself. I crawl back into my own hole that is my bedroom.
The tiny room in the tiny house that I loved until five minutes ago.
It has suddenly become a burning pyre, for no reason. Yes, there’s a reason.
It’s the house that daily witnesses my cowardice and accepts me for who I am. If it would only slap me once and set me straight. But that job is for me, myself. No shortcuts, s’il vous plaît. I have to slap myself, I have to pull myself, I have to dress myself, I have to drag myself. Life is as difficult for the uninterested as it is for the keen.
