The Burden Of Expectation.
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Part One:
Breakfast for one
“Beauty is
terror–whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
When her navy
pea coat appeared inside from the storm it brought seven drops of water with
it, seven slippery barriers against anyone trying to get too close.
He counted
the drips and watched each one soak in to the floor of deeply stained wood.
She stood
there for a moment, adjusted the broach on her coat, suddenly placed a sodden
leather bag on the floor. Her hair fell unevenly around her face, he knew then
she had cut it herself. The surviving brown wisps tugged tightly behind her
ears, still in hiding from the hand of an inexperienced and overzealous artist.
She shifted
her weight and pushed her fringe off her face with the heel of her hand and
frowned. He smiled at her then with his teeth. She looked up but not at him, her
gaze somewhere he could not find.
She stared at
nothing.
That pea coat
had drawn him in with indifference that day. Somehow he wanted to be closer. Closer
to her or further away from how he felt. He wasn’t sure.
§
Part Two: Lunch
alone
“I did never see him.”
The days were
long and the afternoons longer. I was too hot in that stupid pea coat, my
mother had made me wear it since she had heard on the radio it was going to
rain and she said don’t be cold out they said it’s going to rain. And it did. But that hadn’t stopped the heat seeping through trapping me like a sheepish
prisoner in the wool.
I had taken
my bike there by mistake, there had
been too many left turns so when I could, I'd ducked right.
Then there was the café.
The
only place open on such a day, with it’s little battery powered lantern lights
and the smell of rain on hot concrete. I was alone and I was hungry. Finding
the door handle I twisted and slid inside.
I didn’t have a lock for the bike. The
lights inside were too bright.
I slipped
into reverie.
§
Part Three:
Previously arranged dinner plans
“Be wary of the burden
of expectation.”
We had talked
for a long while, although I couldn’t tell you what about. She talked a lot
about herself, and I listened, in between counting the freckles around her eyes
and nodding every sentence or so.
Do you not listen, or do you not care?
Her green
gaze was sad, somehow shrunk the couple of metres between us to make it feel
like we stood fractions apart. I held my breath and noticed a new freckle above
her eyebrow. Her hair seemed shorter before, now it hung longer, limp around
her shoulders. Intentionally untended to, light brown, lifeless.
She was
beautiful.
I smiled
weakly and shifted my weight. We were standing outside together now, we’d spent
hours there. She had put her helmet on and taken it off quite a few times and
neither of us were sure if we were ever going to move from this point.
Or both?
The meanness
in her voice then startled me. I wasn’t sure.
Or both?
She repeated,
this time with a tremble.
Her eyes fell
from mine and I felt my lungs sink to my stomach.
Forget it.
I quickly
opened and shut my mouth, lips suddenly too swollen to comfortably close.
I watched her
step over the black bike frame and push off from the ground where my shoes
seemed to be cemented.
Little drips from the navy pea coat trailed in the wind, no longer burdened by expectation.
§
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