Sweet Lassi Streets

I want to put you under a microscope to see what lies inside. The joy behind your tears, and the pain beneath your smile. I want to pour your essence in a beaker so I can run some tests. Your face is like the world’s most comfortable blanket to a man that needs some rest.

I like being sober around you more than I like getting drunk. Your eyes remind me of autumn leaves and climbing trees for fun. The more time I spend looking at you, the harder it is to look away. A billboard with your picture on it would block traffic for days.

Your breath sounds like fields of wild sunflowers rustling. I know to you most of this seems mildly disgusting. I want to tell you things I wouldn’t normally say just to see how you react. Your lips kiss like whiskey sours and burnt toast with blueberry jam.

I want to put you in a suitcase and take you everywhere I go. Your hair smells like salted caramel in a world of chocolate ice-cream shampoos. I’m a cautiously optimistic hopeless romantic but can’t think of a witty line. Hardly anything else rhymes with ‘uncultured swine.’

I want to stroll with you down sweet lassi streets, where innocence and dreams recover. In a recurring cast of monochrome characters, you’re a splash of vibrant colour. I want to know the things you love and why you love them, and what could garner your hate. Writing usually comes easy, but when it comes to describing you I struggle to articulate.

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Espresso

I sail a raft off the edge of a waterfall that rolls down my face because you got on a plane made of paper and flew into my eye. I jump off a ten story building into a heart-shaped swimming pool of blood which erupts from my chest every time I think of you drowning yourself in doubt. Static in the clouds rushes down from the sky and courses through my veins each time your vocal cords oscillate to scream at me because I finished your chocolate milkshake. Your skin is like a road of plastic melting in the heat of the candle in the light of which you read, in the dark, books the paper of which is made from a tree taller than the highest cloud in the sky. Your scent is like a mixture of cinnamon, crushed pine leaves and green-apple vodka poured into my nose and titrated against reason. Your lips taste like stars in the night’s black canvas of your infinite, chaotic nonsense which I deal with every day. Your hair is like a perfect arrangement of silk atoms spinning round and round like the helicopter blades I got caught in while trying to skydive into the metal concert you’re head-banging at.

I had an espresso today for the first time in my life. Who needs sleep anyway?

Wet Clothes

His eyes adjusted to the light that poured in as he opened the door to the terrace. The cool wind pulled his hair back. He could see the back of her wedding dress. She stood on the edge of the roof, ready to jump.

It was raining.

He ran to her and caught hold of her hand. She turned to slap him with her other hand, but he held that one too. He pulled her from the ledge and held her in his arms. She cried into his shoulder. His clothes were more wet from her tears than from the rain.

He should have listened.

“I’d rather die than marry you,” she’d said.

Education

A car with open windows always has small flies flying around in it. The flies enter the car through the windows and they don’t leave. When the car starts moving, some flies are blown away and some stay. The flies which have been blown away have failed and those that remain are successful. They have found the places where the wind doesn’t reach. The hiding places which keep them safe. They have worked hard to find these places and will not share them with any other.

The windows are now rolled up as the majority of the flies have left. The ones inside are now trapped. The prospect of living is easier than before but still more risky because of periodic attack by the humans in the car. In the end, the flies will mate and create offspring which are still stuck in the car. One day the windows will roll down and they will take the same test their parents did. Some will succeed and some will fail.

The car is your system and the wind is your test.

Where will you hide?

Step

The cold morning wind hits his face as he cruises downhill. The calming thump of the engine beats hard and fast; as does his heart. It is early and the sun is still rising. He has decided to forget his other problems, just as the sky forgets the dark of the night.
He rides for a purpose. He will hear a woman scream and see blood on a child’s face this day. He will hear the boy cry and yet he will feel nothing but happiness. Accomplishment. Pride.

He reaches the tall, white building with the large, red cross and steps into the building. And also into fatherhood.