Tears will dry

I know you’ll cry as you read this. Let the tears cascade down your face messing up the make up that you had taken a lifetime to put on. You won’t care whether the tears fall onto the keyboard causing some electric malfunction in your beloved laptop or that they make your eyes sore behind those thick inch glasses.

You’ve always been an emotional one, that’s what your mum used to say.

You’ll laugh as you think about the first time we met – in a poem. The words drawing you in like a fish to a hook. You wondered to yourself, “he knows me too well”. So picked my twitter handle and decided to say hi.

I was shocked at first. Didn’t think I know you. So I clicked on your profile picture and fell in love with the image. “Memento Mori”. That’s what it said. “Remember you will die”. It must be a sign. I’d just left the doctor’s.

Hi there stranger, I think we should meet.

“He’s so direct”, you thought with a giggle. Your mother said that you should never talk to strangers. But in the words of that poem you saw yourself. Like staring in the mirror. Curiosity might have killed the cat but you didn’t mind being it’s next victim.

I’m in town, are you around?

Coincidentally, I am. Coffee at Khaldi’s?

Sure. Give me 30 minutes.

I wondered what was going through my mind. I had never been this direct. But I was tired of waiting, like a lover at the airport. If time waits for no man, then why should I.

You found your way to the coffee shop, unsure if I would show. Found me seated at the couch in the corner, a smile to let you know you shouldn’t be afraid.

There was twinkle in my eyes you’d never seen before. An honesty in my smile that seemed to draw you close. I reached out to hug you and you stretched out a hand. “This is moving too fast, I barely even know him”. Yet your heart seemed to tell you different.

“I loved you poem. It’s as if you read my mind.”

“Maybe I did. It could my superpower.”

I loved the way you laughed. Not too long to sound like you were forcing it, but just enough to let me we know we shared a sense of humor.

“Do you write often? Or was it a first”

“I write to slow the time cause life moves too fast. It’s like being on a highway in a bus full of adults. You’re just a ten year old and can’t join in the conversation. So you blow some air onto the window and draw mountains with your fingers. Soon enough, a stream appears and you have to draw sheep coming to have their fill. But what are sheep without a shepherd and what is a shepherd without God. It’s an endless cycle, for who is God without faith?”

“A man of parables”, you found yourself thinking. Mystery is an aphrodisiac to the brain.

We talked about the sun and what if the world was flat. A conversation full of nothing and something in between. Unfortunately you had to leave so said your goodbyes.

“Let us meet tomorrow, I wish I had more time”.

You got home feeling like a princess who’d found the last frog. Hid it from the other bitches so you could kiss it when the sun rose in the morning.

You heard your phone beeping, a text from the one.

“Hi Abi, it was nice hanging with you. I was just from the doctor’s. He said I wouldn’t last the night. Glad I got to meet you. This is my final goodbye”.