The place had no soul or spirit left, and it was evident in the colourless walls, the unclean glasses, the empty eyes of the server who left me a menu card.
I’d never felt sadder at the prospect of not being a part of someone else’s story.
The infallible whiteness of the walls, the omnipresent smell of disinfectants, and the fields of artificial grass come back to me. Swimming before me are visions of smiling children and the legions of overworked childcare professionals constantly at their service. Every blink threatens to permanently relocate me to their world of ceaseless laughter.
It’s God’s funny way of reminding me that all that is received is a gift that is broken.
Something was ominous about the way the doorbell rang. Not that the one who pressed it was bringing bad luck, but the other side seemed menacing for the one who waited at the door.
June 2042. That’s the first day the floods came but never left. For over a decade, politicians and billionaires had told the world it would be alright. Things were under control.
When the city slept, I wrote in my diary as if I was writing to you, not knowing if my words would ever reach you. I cried myself to sleep every night just to wake up to a reality that was more excruciating than any nightmare I could think of.
As I burn through my twenties at a nauseating speed, the thought that I will die alone creeps in softly, stretches, and curls into a tight ball like a sleepy kitten, and claims my heart as its permanent residence.
Climbing over walls with barbed wire fences, Steep stairs and stained elevators,
It was 7:40, and he’s been waiting on the other side of the glass, waiting for a certain routine to fall into place, a disassembled camera long forgotten on the counter: a minute till his father came in for his daily dose of my-son-is-a-disappointment tirade,
I saw a veiled widow yesterday, walking through the corpse road, distant, but the veil was beautiful. She buried a ring, I saw it, it shone, maybe diamond I can’t differentiate,
