How does it feel like to go home alone? You walk all the way by
yourself, to be home alone. I have forgotten how it feels.
Does it feel like you are in fire, through all these years? Does the sky look drooping to you, heavy with the scourges as the way you carry weariness? Do you long to take it to the brim of oceans, just to be relieved in that non-existing place?
Now you are waiting for the bus that again is late. Cruel light
unveils your twists and folds, like a brushed and worn-out leather
baggage.
Or perhaps you at one point of time and space have had the warmth of a pair
of tender arms, and having been missing it forever, at silent places.
But you no longer can tell if it has been true, or if you are still
you.
The heart you have keeps on feeling, as if by definition it would not
die. And even if you lie to yourself about love, you let yourself go
with all foolishness. You can never be a player, but a sufferer, a
lone walker late at night, at the metro bus station.
But if you tell me after all these years, the best wine has been made;
or that after all the storms, the sea is all in tranquility, I wouldn't
know whether to believe you or not. I have forgotten how it feels.
I walk the streets with the painted woman pressed close to my face. In the
city, when I sit in the train, she nudges closer to me, her lips shining with red paint. It is not the color of blood, but a ringing,
livid red, the kind that is made by a skillful brush of hand that aims
to dazzle. As I see her, her lip will drip the color, drop after drop,
like dews dropping from the tip of a grass leaf.
Sometimes her eyes can be seen hidden behind thick black lashes. It's impossible to look her in the eyes and see what she has in mind. Other times she dons a hat, and the eyes are obscured behind it. As if determined, she
shuts her mouth tight; and the color would drip down slowly.
The paint woman does not know me. She never looks up nor talks. She's
like a subject, only perfect. Yet she is also mournful, like the red
lips you wear with a black dress, on a rainy day, under a black umbrella.
When I was 16, I painted her once. It is maybe the best crayon I've ever done. In the picture she sits on the grass, in a florid skirt and wide-brimmed hat; and her skirt spreads out prettily. It was one the kind in many layers and colors, made of satin.
Sometimes I'd believe the painted woman is the beautiful me that never
exists. She does not come to haunt me when I'm in the flame of love, nor would I be reminded of her if I take a walk through the woods in the mountains. She does not align with sunshine on waters, or a purring cat. Who knows? Maybe secretly I disire to be her, the magnification of her in flesh. That's a frightening thought. I had other visions. Those would have made me happier.
The painted woman does not age. She will not become ugly, only become more and more painted through the years.
Until the world stops making her so.