This is nothing more than early-morning riff-raff about last night.

Late last evening to be exact, when the only boundary in between
was the exaggerated shadow of candlelight in the darkness.

My face was lit with borrowed colours; his eyelids were batting impish delight.

Our hands were to ourselves.


And for a while to our food: his hot creamy mushroom soup and my steak topped with the most magnificently magical mushroom sauce.

He was coffee, and I, in contrast, coffee with milk: the differences were more than skin deep.

He seems to have figured love out: “Love rhymes only with the heavens above. Still, we have quite a few martyrs in its name and, like King Duncan, more men have been slain in its castle than died of any other single cause. Duncan himself was no fool, as his words testify when the execution of Cawdor is reported to him. He knew that appearances could be deceptive and yet he chose to put his trust in Macbeth.”

While men – I admit - are intelligent, women are cunning: even the most intelligent of men can fall prey. The wisest…the most experienced: the most seemingly in control.

He obviously agrees. “Men are fools as a general rule and twice so when they are dealing with women,” he writes. “Indeed, in the latter case, the majority even tends to act foolish gladly.”

Yes the conversation is all high-flying and philosophical. but it is – for the most part - enlighteningly light, never soporific.

But the undertones are all but clear.
I think. I hope.

The buzzing in my head is dizzy-coloured. Golden sparks and bubble-pebbles flying around confusedly. How lop-sided is his smile: hinged precariously – almost – in that stubbly area between the lips and the chin or titled upwards in rascally glee? What colour are the lips: a cigarette-dyed concoction of purple and blood or a maddeningly seductive cross between flesh and black?

I want to know why he is staring at something behind me: is it the basketball game that interests him or the few, loose wisps of my curls?


I am on the edge, about to slide through. This rabble-rousing is too much.


- posted by Mehreen Malik @ 11:13 AM