THE SECRET GARDEN.

“I can’t be with you.”

“No.”

“I can’t.”

I breathed deep. “I want you to reconsider that.”

“What?”

“I want you to think about what you said, and not say it again.”

I don’t know if she complied, but she didn’t speak beyond, at least for the while that could be called ‘subsequent’. We weren’t eating, it wasn’t a dinner date that went wrong, because I don’t even know if it was going wrong or if it was heading exactly where I wanted it to head. But then again, I couldn’t afford a ‘tongue-in-cheek’; I couldn’t resist one either. I was reminded that it was turning out to be one of those times when my hand ceases to be part of me, a part my mind could will. I went for her forehead, got to her cheek, but a few strands of the hair that fell on her face were all I managed to grasp between my fingers: The spaces that were hers, that are.

“I don’t know how to explain…”

“I never asked you to.”

I couldn’t bring myself to loathe her tears, it’s something I had learnt out of trial and error, and I’ve always erred when it came anywhere close to hating anything that was hers. The tip of my index finger was all that acted and a dew of her teardrop was all it caught, a speck and its rainbow to some lucky fly. She wasn’t guilty, she never looked down, she never used to. Always the cause, never the act: she ghost-wrote me. She still does, and I guess she would as long as I exist, for her lifetime is too much to ask for. Too long a time in the clouds, too much of summer, too much of shine; too much of ‘ever-last’.

“This guy…” she began. I swore I could have cried, but a half a smile is the closest I got to it. “He…”

I looked down at the grass. Not that I wished I were as fleeting, so that I could boast of a whole life with her, but because I couldn’t stop a prospective laugh that threatened to show if I looked at her shuttling eyes. Speaking would be an even worse give-away, while the silence could hurt her. But I was helpless to be otherwise, pretending I was only listening to ‘Idiot Wind’ and not seeing it live.

“All you…” she said, shaking her head. “All you…”

I couldn’t even nod.

“What are you doing?” I wished I could stop her sobs. “What are you even doing?” She shook her head again. “Cynical. So, so cynical.”

“So are you.” I bit my lip.

She shook her head again: I was challenging her. Big deal, she always exhausted me.

“A second’s plunge in fire, dead,

a breath of heaven, letter-sent;

an apple of mine, in moonlit eyes,

the only times that I’m alive…”

She shrugged her shoulders and looked away, as I tried to find the smile I framed. I’ve never wanted to say a lot of things to her, she never fancied dessert, this dinner-woman with a meal of a mind that she hogged all by herself. Still I did say this because it needed to be said and she was too close to miss it, even if whispered.

“Mere minutes, you know…” I said as I hugged her. “And you shouldn’t demand from the dead, that’s like a violation, I could sue you for that.”

She shook her head again before she burned my eyes: I should have settled for the top of her head.

“I’ll see if you can pull these threads apart.”

And I won't tell you how long I kissed her, in this losing game that I played.