Sellophane

(This be written by Aaki
Sigh, apparently it be for me.)


***
Do you know how gorgeous you look right now, he said, quite out of breath as he looked down at me.

He had come back.

I had watched him as he was coming back--running towards the hillock chasing an imaginary football, perhaps. Football and women were all that he would ever chase, my imaginary sibling does not believe in taking trouble otherwise. This is conjecture. Don't get me wrong—I usually leave character sketches by themselves. I would rather not judge, you see.

I watched him no more as he seated himself next to me, all ready to begin a lesson on cigarettes that I had never cared to know about. Menthol sugar was handed to me, and the elegance of what was about to begin sought to interest me enough to look at him, and then look beyond him to a particularly tall Neem tree—that leprechaun that was shimmering its golden wisdom all the while the matches were searched for, imaginary footballs were chased, stories were intertwined.

It lit, the strange boy handed the cigarette to me, adjusted my fingers to the way they ought to be, and I inhaled strange tastes and smells. I billowed smoke caring nothing for it, and I spoke as much. You don't look like a whore or a stupid inexperienced girl when you smoke, you know? He said that I smoked with the elegance of a woman. I think I believed for a minute, and then I reverted to concentrating on the smoke in my mouth, my insides churning with the strange taste of it, it making no music as it was supposed to. It should have, what did they show it in the movies for? The long cigarette wrapped around long fingers, the long fingers trapping the long cigarette, smoke lighting up the dark, creating the romance of a fog when there earlier had been none.


I gave up, cigarettes are wasted on me, I said, giving the rest of it to him. I cannot feel anything.

You do not feel anything because you do not want to feel anything anymore, he retorted mildly as he lay down on the grass, his bag his pillow, he stretched under the tree and felt the magic of the confusion that the tree was for himself.

Suddenly was I angry, suddenly I made a reference to some of the anger, and got up and signaled for him to come along. It was nothing, and it was everything. I think I feel too much. I do not quite believe anybody will agree, though.

Walk forgotten, I walked alone, my man following with the cigarette I had forsaken, apologizing for things that had never happened.

Later that night, he told me he loved me. I coiled myself around the cigarette that was still leftover in my bag, and smoked in the emptiness of my room. I wanted to feel something, feel anything.

But then, Cigarettes are quite useless for companions anyway.