For Want Of A Better World

I woke up this morning, and realised, the romance in me had died, sometime in the night. It was a peaceful demise, Like a death from starvation, disease, old age, Just wasting away behind the scenes, without a fight. I am no longer the ashes on my pillow, Just memories moving through a murky past, The sinews of my being move me to look away from the remains, Afraid to know if it was an end he deserved, But I think he would have liked that. I move on with my being, Taking pleasure from what is here and now, A cold drop of water pleases more my shoulder, Than the scribblings of a mind, fevered, With visions beyond mankind, With sweat on his brow. The bed lies empty as I come back, The room frozen in a wanton sigh, I clasp the folds of the blanket, afraid, Of a shroud debased by my existence, To lay down my head, and cry.

06:45 The alarm rings. My hand flails in the dark for the phone on the countertop, to turn it off. One eye opens crookedly, as if remembering the existence of light, and peeks across the bed to the edge of the screen. No messages. 07:00 The second alarm rings. This time, the hand knows where the sound comes from, and turns it off in a second. The erstwhile lazy eye betrays me though, and hoping against hope looks again at the screen. No messages. I get up, and get ready for the day. 7:45 The hand, smelling faintly of aftershave, grabs the shirt from the hangar. The shoes are scrubbed and worn, as the eyes look askance at where the phone is charging. No messages. 9:30 The tummy, quite full from breakfast, waddles merrily on its way to work. It flutters as the lady at the security check asks for the phone while it passes through the kiosk. It sinks when it reaches the other side. No messages. 11:30 The sound of a message. A camera couldn't tell if the hand reached...

Don't act like you don't know me. I'm that man from the backalleys of your brain. Yes, that very same guy! The decrepit being who goes through the vicissitudes of life thinking a longer and more convoluted word, wrapped in a compound sentence filled with reactionary double-entendres is the only way to say it right.  The one who thinks he deserves the woman he loves simply by virtue of being the only one not making any outright effort to get her, in a sea of men looking to make her feel special. The one who believes that every woman deserves to be fallen in love wih, and leads the crusade by example. The one who sees himself seek solace in the sound of a typewriter rather than in the company of her who he so desperately finds himself craving. Too classy to be vulnerable, and too timid to dominate; or so he tells himself. Life becomes a lot easier to tolerate, once you get past this arbitrary concept of it being "fair". That the universe has nothing better to d...