MOMENTS Ah-ah. You shouldn’t let a little thing like an uncompleted argument stop you from sliding your foot across the bed and rubbing mine gently with it. Yes. In one of those brief interludes at night, when your eyes flutter open, but you are not really awake, not fully asleep either, somewhere between heaven and earth; that place where we are most vulnerable, incapable of lying, when we mutter names of lovers long banished from conscious memory, you know? So, I went to bed last night angry with you. But in one of those moments, I reached across and stroked your arm. Because love is the ultimate all-weather vehicle. Yes. So, don’t think I won’t wake up tomorrow with the same scowl on my face. True! For we cannot leave uncompleted arguments, like shards of broken glass, littered all over the place. How can? When I could open a cupboard tomorrow and one of them will fall out and cut me; step into the bathroom and another one will jump up and cut me; go downstairs to help you with shopping bags, mistakenly drop your crate of eggs and – imagine it - instead of calling me clumsy, you will start crying and telling me I am ‘completely unreliable’. All because of one quarrel that is still simmering somewhere. So, my sister, we will complete it. Yes. Snatch your head-tie off and wind it tight round your waist, we will complete this quarrel today. But not like we used to do. Don’t you know? Starve it long enough and – made in heaven and all – love will die. I tell you, that was how we went around, holding our breaths, walking past each other like we didn’t exist, till a day became two, and two became seven. Is that how to fight? And in that silent week I did not say things I cannot say now. Well, I could, but – honestly – saying, ‘Baby, you look beautiful in that dress’ is not the same thing as saying, ‘Ehm, two days ago, when we were still quarrelling, you know that dress you wore, you looked beautiful in it.’ True. My brother, I don’t know everything we will end up regretting in this life, but I’m pretty sure wasted time will be high on the list. So, let us re-write the rules of engagement. Yes. These moments come not caring whether we are in the middle of a crisis or not. I tell you, it is not every day your sweetie will walk past you and you will – honest-to-God – just feel like spanking her bum-bum. So, if it so happens that that funny commercial I had been trying (unsuccessfully) for days to describe to you decides to pop up in one of the interludes between our vigorous shouting bouts, my sister, I will call you to come and look at it. Even if you do your face like pancake and wait till after we complete the argument to tell me, “But, kai, that thing was funny sha!” Yes. That is how we will fight. We will fight like people who expect to hold hands later today and watch a movie; like people who expect to meet up this very afternoon for lunch and gossip about other people. You know? Like people who know they will raise these children together from cradle till we have to start calling them to remind them they still have parents that are old, yes, but very much alive. That is how we will fight. Like people who know they will briefly stir in their sleep tonight – not tomorrow – to play a quick game of footsy.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 21:30:12 +0000
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