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Musings
I
Only Have You
She’s got half a face and I’ve got till the end of the week to put it
together. All these days with her ugly. Her ugly everywhere
inescapable, it’s not turning into beauty like I promised.
The door it opens differently now. Anticipation in her polite rushing
footsteps to see me, be with me. The lock turns with no hesitation, I
walk in, no words, hesitation, ready to be alone together.
How different its all become from the beginning when I saw her on the
street with her half face disgrace, half moon embrace. People pretend
not to notice. I look at it, her, all to touch where it hurts, her
swollen redness, her mangled goodness.
To touch is to heal to hurt is to steal her story.
I followed, took pictures from afar. As she stood on the line at the
post office, as she paid for her groceries with no eyes touching her.
Where was she? I couldn’t tell how it felt for her. How she did it, to
go on each day so quietly disturbed, silently ignored. She goes on. I
can’t go on. We all go on somehow.
In all the pictures she clashes with all colors all goodness. Hours
and hours go by I look into her, look for her in her pictures, look
for what I know I saw. I realize what to do, it comes so suddenly.
All day I smoke camels on the corner waiting for her. I try and speak
to her. Please I need to talk to you. I show her my camera, I take
pictures of her. Her gaze to the ground, her smile not smiling. We go
nowhere with her broken English, my broken heart. She walks away. I
follow, corner her. I need to love you to make this all work, okay?
Tears and I’m real close to everything that makes her cry, her flaw my
beauty, I touch it with my softness, my forced goodness.
I’m taking pictures, she’s undressed. My cigarette burns slowly
through the room. The smoke hangs in the light by the window, she
looks at it as one would a lonesome cloud on a clear sunny day. One
cloud, can it cover all the magnificence of the sun?
She starts cooking something for me and she’s gotten use to my looking
at her. I’m allowed to, I am allowed to do whatever I please. Her ugly
is mine. She doesn’t care. Because of it I’m by her side, without it
I’d be gone.
Her half face is bringing joy, the joy that comes right after a lot of
sadness.
The smiles get brighter, the laughter longer, I never show her the
work – it might hurt her. Slowly I realize I really have nothing. Just
a lot of pictures of some mangled girl, nothing comes together. I stop
going to her place, the sky fades into darkness again and again. I
feel a happiness inside I can’t describe.
– Gaurav Deep Arora
February 16, 2003
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