The Boy inside me

Why…?

Don’t answer. Not asking you dear. Questioning the world. Don’t answer world, I need no answers. Don’t speak angel, you’re beautiful…

Dragging myself away from you. The world goes round as Microsoft counts sales and as the Bush admin. counts casualties in Iraq. I am dragging myself away from accusing you and your accusations. As the sun sets in my horizon I forgot that the moon was already up there, the stars were… Why didn’t you remain the moon dear, why did you choose to be the sun? Did you forget that I am almost an vampire, a remnant of your past refusing to die away but still so dead? I am wary of lights pounding on me, I am thirsty of… I promise not to do that on you again.

Just remembered I left the boy inside me hidden in your wardrobe, probably he is playing with your things in there, twirling laces round his fingers. Please don’t spank him anymore. Just show him the doors, he will catch me up in the streets, the brat has a nose for me… Well, I have grown a habit of being trailed by him, he catches my finger no more.

Because the moon is rising. I will unleash the boy on the moon and settle down in my chairs to pay attention to the books I have left unread, the posts not keyed in, the manuscripts not typed, the pains still not painted in my face, the screams still left not swallowed, the world I have left uncursed… The boy will assail the moon, drench in moonlight-rain, peep into moonsister’s hidden hemisphere. The brat is left with no manners, can tug at ladies’ clothes so that the textiles suddenly cling upwards and brush the peaks of their bosom, sending a mild shiver down their moonspine. The boy lifts their hairs to smell the back of their neck. Heck Lord! The boy is left with no manners!

Don’t reprimand me please, I always wanted you to take custody of the boy. I am tired of being accountable for his days and ways. I have my works to do, left them unattended for so many years rather. When the boy returns at night I can smell nicotine in his breath, a bottle of cough-syrup gulped sometimes when he is far away from catching tropical cold. I am tired of the boy, but still… just arranging a corner of my bed for him to doze off is not hard you see. I saw him smoke once, legs straddling a sofa-handrest – he knows acrobatic methods of perching himself in the oddest of all places – but he was reading Baudelaire. I was not sure which one to choose: the boy smoking or the boy reading. Precocious: he is either way, you would say, he has grown the wrong way round. But dear, I also fumbled when I was about to abort him, because I did not know which one to choose: the boy you were fond of so much, digging its face in your valleys to smell out heaven’s nectar (replying “I love you five” to your “I love you too”) or the boy you were so exasperated of lately, the boy who confused ‘maturity’ with the ‘for adults only’, telling lies always because you never believed him when he told you the truth. He has the habit of getting up at night – I saw him in the dark – though the attached bath is open he would huddle towards the window and piss noisy down the street.

I will send the boy to the moon. The moon has fables to recite. He liked fables always.

Believe me, you always accused me of pampering him, but I am tired of him! I abhor him, his obstinate silence of not growing up, his arrogance of not coping up, his systematic evaporation of all cuteness which would have redeemed him, the hints of pimples in his cheeks renders him unsuitable of any affection. I watch him, he looks hungry. But when he watches me contemplating him, he gathers up a poise, a dumbness, a gait, a glance which provokes a slap hard to restrain. An wriggling unease in my torso thrusts me towards finding out an excuse to do it: slap him right and left after offering a choice of any one. But okay, I turn away my eyes because a slap must never search out a miscreant, the other way round is preferable.

The moon might croon him to sleep, kill him softly with her song…

He said he dreamt of visiting the seas. I saw him happy on the city-streets twice. Please don’t desert him away from the city, from the silver-screen dreamgirl in the billboards and cutouts at which he stares attentively throughout the days, when he painstakingly pinches coins from all attainable sources to gather and purchase a ticket to see her move like a woman only can do…

Okay, don’t tell me once more that he is not your son and that I am his father; but you were fond of him right? You told that he is borning within you? Sometimes I feel like bursting into tears and howling up my cries because I can’t take him any longer but I hold myself back because I know the boy inside me is not asleep in the other room, he will lift his eyes towards the roof from his misty thoughts of running away, turn his ears at the closed door and hear me, and he will not question me next morning (that ceases him being a child anymore, not asking questions) has developed this habit of not being vocal and askance about the puzzles of the world, an adult crying in a way he never recalls he has cried that way anyday.

There is this difference: I always searched for a shelter, he never did…

And that there is…also…a little girl in you woman, as Dylan sang…

***

The image is from Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, the protagonist is ‘the boy’…

Ending with something I discovered today, a little verse which will have a better impact than my loquaciousness. Its written by a lady who is ‘living like a flame’. Feels so good when someone sculpts out the words the way you can’t arrange properly… Thank you Rimidi, I’ll never achieve your brevity and precision.

Make a Wish

I have thrown myself into work
Like a coin into a well
A vanishing bright drop
Speeding into nothing

One day you will hear the splash
I am no longer legally tender

You’ll just have to wish for, fish for
Something a little less tarnished.