searingedrock

Today while walking downtown I saw:

A beautiful pair of twin teenage girls, with dark straight hair and striking blue eyes. They were filled with that powerful aura that women have when they are at their pinnacle of youth.

A sexy tanned woman in black tights and boots, she had dark hair in a ponytail with the front upswept. She was also very aware of her appeal, casting disinterested, proud gazes before heading into a Topshop outlet. She was older, darker with knowledge, she seemed even more powerful. I doubt any man could resist her.

Behind me, in the line for the bus, I saw a mother and two girls, and a boy in his pram. He had a delicious fluffy cream-coloured bunny which they would shake in front of him and he would squeal with laughter. I couldn't help smiling. His eyes were china blue and large as saucers.

In the midst of my voyeurism I looked up at a window across the street, which was a McDonalds outlet, and through the big window I saw a man seated there, observing me. Nothing makes me nervous like being observed. He quickly looked away and so did I. It is strange, I think, for them to see an Asian girl. I am reminded of that Oriental stereotype, Geisha.

Passing a bright blue Stagecoach bus I see the bus driver with shocking blue eyes, they match the bus perfectly, I am tempted to shout out some nonsense about the bus matching his eyes but of course I don't.

This weekend I am taking a friend to Edinburgh, where hopefully I will show her castles and museums and so on.

Franka walks the streets after I kiss her goodbye, leaving her bed warm and damp with our love. She has to work, she says. Just so I met her, walking along the wharf one summer afternoon with the north wind blowing cool and crisp and there she was, blond hair plastered behind her and her jacket open, one pink nipple impudently peeking out from her shirt. How could a man resist that? And I, touching God's hard earth after three months of loneliness. It was almost as good as a meal, I thought. That was next, anyhow.

A woman is neccessary. A woman stops those thoughts that men stave off daily, such as the fear that they will stop one day and see behind them a long shadow of what they could have done, and before them only a cliff with no bottom. I needed Franka, to be as close to her, inside her, like touching land, I touched her. I ignored that her face was tired worn and that her kohl rimmed her eyes like a bruise. Her breath was stale but not unpleasant. She had this manner of holding her breath, and looking slightly to my left. After I was finished she smiled, like a waiter would after you complimented their meal.

I forgot her really, after all she was just a prostitute. The next time I saw her was at the city park, during those long dusky evenings that linger in temperate summers. She was pulling down her skirt. I glanced at her as you would someone you thought you knew, but weren't quite sure. She asked me for a light, using my lit cigarette as a cue. I lit her up. She paused, looking at me as one would a child who is quite sure they know everything there is to know. She looked at me and said a thing.

"Make it fast and you never remember. I remember you though." There was her lopsided smile again and me with twenty odd years of working ships. I felt the crookedness of it sidling around my chest, her bends and wavers matching the beaten dents and broken corners of me.

We met again. And again. What more can I say?

My heart walks the street in a tight skirt, a cigarette in her lips. Franka.

( The Short Lime )

You stand at a corner, not distinct from any other street corner, placed with sweet shops and clothes shops and people looking for places to put their money. At the corner the streetlight has a little man who is lit up all red. When he turns green you must cross. However to cross you must decide which corner you will cross to, because there are four. Do you want to go over to the other corner with the neon lights saying 'Taco Heaven' or the one littered with paper and where someone sits on the pavement with a blanket over their legs? Or are you going to the other corner with the people dressed in party dresses and waiting to go inside a very fine place? Because you must go somewhere.

The little man lights up red, then green, then red, and then green again.

Days are ordered lines of letters set out in unending black ink, plain font, size 12. Within the alienation of self is the prservation of sanity through ordered routines; one, two, three, four. And it is hot outside; we huddle like mice within our refrigerated cubicles, eat lunch at the computer and fall, dead, at midnight, into bed.

Outside the sun burns with all the passion that we lack, glaring, daring us to see. At sunset I pass along the wharf with the clouds hanging purple-pink and the sun like a bruise, the symbol of guilt;
you have wasted the day away. Nightime is for forgetting.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...I wait patiently, in the meanwhile counting my steps; one, two, three four.

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Franka

Short story number one

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Counting

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April 2017

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