Burning Love

The Garden of Kama — Byam Shaw

1

The waitress placed a single plate on the table beside where Ryan sat, a single table with a young couple seated perpendicularly to one another. She rubbed a bare foot along his shin as he fed her one forkful after another of Carbonara. Each time the fork left her mouth, he licked what remained off the utensil and returned it to the plate. She smiled, pleased at the sight, grinning with the kind of grin that comes when lust has grown into something more tender and enviable. Ryan was certainly envious, he drew the last drag of his third cigarette and stubbed it out into the ashtray. A tuft of grey smoke blew into his eye, it welled with water as he rubbed it. Just as he did, he glanced at the cafe entrance in the same manner as the dozens of times he’d done so in the half hour since he walked in and, at long last, she appeared.

Like a bonfire in the snow, Ryan thought, as he jumped from his seat grinning from ear to ear with his arms wide apart. She returned his smile, but with the same vacancy he’d noticed last week. This whole month, in fact. At first he thought she was just blue, as she sometimes gets, as everyone does, but it’s persisted long enough that something wasn’t right. He wondered if he was just overthinking, as he often does, and while he wondered this she arrived at the table and let him embrace her. Her palms grazed his back for two seconds until she tried to pull away but he refused to, he held her there with her hands hanging down lazily, and kissed her head. Her vanilla aroma wafted into his nose as he dabbed his watering eye in a lock of her hair, the smell alone was enough to pound him with yearning. They sat down, facing each other.

“The smoke got in my eye, it’s nothing.” said Ryan.

“What? Oh yeah, your eye.” replied Zehra.

He dabbed at it with a tissue, blinked rapidly and continued “You look beautiful.”

“Thank you.” She fidgeted with a pepper shaker, her gaze fixed on it with brows slightly furrowed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Are we ordering?”

As they perused the menu, the girl on the table beside scooped a smear of sauce off the corner of her lip with a thumb and held it out to the boy. He wrapped his lips around it, as his palm caressed the inside of her thigh. She took it out slowly and gleefully giggled.

Finding no other direction for the anxiety coursing beneath his skin, Ryan lit up another cigarette and offered the pack to Zehra. She apprehensively reached inside and lit up too.

“Baby” he said helplessly, wearily “What’s going on with you? You’ve been so distant lately and I’ve tried to give you space but…I need you to talk to me. Something’s up, and I’d like to know. I’m here. Talk to me.”

She drew the smoke in with all the breath she had, and kept it in. While the pepper shaker clicked rapidly against the table, the smoke billowed slowly back out with each word she spoke.

“I’m just…you…you keep saying you’re here for me, but that’s bullshit. You’re only available when it’s convenient for you. I’ve told you so many times that I need you, I need you to be there when I need you, and I’ve waited for that to happen. But I’m tired of waiting, Ryan. I mean, even when I vent about something you don’t comfort me at all, you just sit quietly and listen. Why don’t you say anything? Why don’t you do something? Don’t you care that I’m upset? That I’m hurting and I need you to help me?”

The pepper shaker dropped to the table and rolled slowly towards him. Her eyes finally caught his, but without a thing tender within.

“All you want is to be alone with your poems, you and your poems, and even the things you write about, shit, it should be illegal. You’re too free with your words, too…perverted. Yeah, I said it. I’m sorry, but it’s true. You’re a good writer, you know I think you are, but something’s got to give here. How long can I just be sitting around waiting for you to call me? Am I not wasting my time? Tell me, do you really think what we have is love? We only talk a few times a week, when we meet we fuck more than we talk, and on the rare occasion that we do talk you don’t speak! Can you really call that love?”

The girl on the table beside them had made her way to the boy’s lap, his fingers disappeared between her thighs while their tongues slathered each other’s faces as though the meal they shared hadn’t sated a thing. Ryan blew smoke in their direction, but they didn’t notice. He shifted his attention back, noticing Zehra’s hands, her mauve-painted nails, how lithe each of her fingers were and how sweet they looked left loose when she’d lie fast asleep on his arm. He’d always lean down and kiss each nail, she’d never notice and he didn’t want her to. He reached for them now, but she pulled away and hid them under the table.

“What about the poems I’ve written to you?” He asked.

“What about them?”

“You think they’re…perverted?”

“That’s what you got from this? Typical.” She leaned back and folded her arms, huffing.

“You didn’t answer.”

“Are you even listening to me? I’m telling you that you’re not there for me and…you’re just…proving my point.”

“Stop evading the question. Answer it, and then we can talk about everything else.”

Zehra’s indignation emanated as she stubbed her smoke out and reached for a glass of water, her hand trembling. The motion of her pouring-raising-sipping passed like fire ants drowning as Ryan found his breathing paused.

“Your poems made me cry, Ryan. Isn’t that enough of an answer?”

A waitress arrived at the table, watching their troubled faces expectantly, avoiding the sight of the table beside them. “What would you like, ma’am?” she asked.

Zehra, with the spell momentarily broken, smiled politely back at her and asked for matcha. Ryan, black coffee. The waitress receded as the manager of the place approached the lascivious couple and whispered something to them, their faces made a sound somewhere between a suck and a pop as they parted and faced him- both pink, both slathered. They paid their bill and walked out, each one’s hand in the other’s back pocket.

“The reason I asked” Ryan said “is…’cause that’s what they were for. To be with you, when I can’t be. But clearly, that’s not enough.”

“It’s not fucking normal, Ryan. Normal people talk and hang around and just be with each other.”

“If normalcy’s what you want, why are you with me?”

“I find myself asking that more and more these days.”

“Why haven’t you brought it up until now? You’ve been so far from me even when we’ve been together, and never once did you say a word. God knows I’m not allowed to ask you about it, so I didn’t. But now, I was supposed to?”

“You’re not supposed to do anything. Fuck, you’re impossible to talk to.”

“I’m listening to every word you’re saying, Zehra. If the situation was this dire, don’t you think we should have talked about it? I’ve been forcing myself to call you, in spite of how much I loathe the phone, but you don’t talk about yourself, what’s going on with you, it’s everything else but that. Every inanity under the sun.”

“Inane? Fuck you. Who do you think you are? Jesus, you and your condescension. Do you think you’re doing me a favour by listening to me?”

“It’s inane if it’s not you. I’m not slighting you, everything else but you.”

“What does that mean? My friends? My family’s stories? That is me.”

“You’re so much more than that.”

“Don’t tell me what I am. I know what the fuck I am.”

She hit the last words with something deeply, utterly contorted. It felt like a bullet to Ryan, and froze him. What did I do, really? He wondered. I’ve been just the same. Just as I’ve always been. In fact, the last poem I wrote to her was only a few weeks ago. She’s never been like this before. How did it get so ugly, so soon?

These questions zipped on a loop between his ears, each hurting more than the last, until a sudden stab of something concrete. He began to feel undeniably that there’s something more here, something more that she was not divulging. And, with this, fear brewed between the confines of his heart and his lungs, fear of something dreadful.

The waitress returned with the drinks and, sensing the tension of the table, placed them down hastily and left. Zehra held another cigarette between her fingers with an elbow on the table and her sight outside the window.

“Okay. Tell me, then. I’m listening.”

“I have nothing pleasant to say to you.”

“Zehra, you sound…venomous. It’s…I’ve never seen you like this. Where’s it all coming from?”

“Do I need to spell it out for you? You’re…not…around.”

“We spoke twice last week, we’ve texted nearly every day, and we just had dinner at that Portuguese spot a fortnight ago. That’s what you call not being around?”

“Our calls are ten minutes, if that, and the texts? Please. If there’s anything less than small talk, that’s what that is.”

“What other response could I possibly have to your…gossip? All you’re doing is yapping about some other person’s business. I’m still listening to them, it’s just…can anyone be more engaged with things as trivial as those?”

“Hmm. Inane and trivial? By all means, keep going.”

“Again, baby, I’m not talking about you. It’s the matters themselves, the subjects of the talk. When we’re tender together, like we were at the restaurant or every time we’re cuddling, it’s lovely, it’s perfection, it’s the song of you playing just for me and I am your sole zealot. Remember when you told me about your childhood, when you first started painting? The squirrel in the sun that was snatched by the kite? That’s a magic tale, Zehra. That’s you. That’s what I yearn for all the time, what I’m in love with. And anything besides that…just doesn’t compare. That’s all I’m saying. You couldn’t be inane if you tried, you beautiful girl, I just don’t understand why you want to be.”

“You know what the problem is, Ryan? You’ve never loved me, just an idea of me, some elusive dream of a girl who looks like me. I tried to be that for you…for a while, but I’m tired of it. I’m tired of feeling so damn inadequate. You make me feel like I can never be enough.”

“What?” Ryan, as he has been forced to do in every similar moment of the past year, tried his best to hold irritation with her total absence of empathy and to forgive her the things he wished he should shake into her being. But now, with all that’s been said, he couldn’t possibly contain it, the levee of his patience came undone. “I’ve showered you with more love than anyone can ever conceive of, I literally fall to my knees and kiss every part of you and recite poems of praise to you and cook for you and always, always admire you. This makes you feel inadequate? What the fuck are you talking about? Something’s not making sense here. Your demeanour, your…throwing all this on me all of a sudden, the fucking absence of anything soft in your eyes…I’ve walked on eggshells long enough, I’ve waited and waited long enough for you to open up to me about all these things you say I’m not around for. You never have. I’ve pleaded with you, and still you never have. So, tell me now, for god’s sake, what the hell aren’t you telling me?”

Zehra, her eyes darkening with each still minute staring at a space in the corner of the window, whispered with finality “I don’t think I can do this any more.”

Something heavy fell inside Ryan’s chest that choked him and, though he felt this and could barely breathe feeling this, he could not say a word. He just stared at her, his love, his everything, with disbelief.

“Now you’ve nothing to say?” She asked, with some softness beneath the many layers of spite. He reached his hand across the table again to touch her, just hold her, any part of her, but she didn’t oblige. Even her eyes could not meet his. Though tears rolled down his face and a helpless whimper escaped his throat, her nostrils flared as she fixed her face on the pepper shaker standing motionless upon the table.

“Zehra, I love you” Ryan said, pleadingly “Please…this isn’t…this can’t…why are you doing this? Why are you being so cruel? I love you so much…”

“You just say things, all you do is say things, you don’t show it.”

“What are the poems then? They show, they show all the impossible things I can’t show physically.”

“They’re just words, Ryan.”

The gash inside Ryan continued to gape as the question he had to ask rose from the pits to the tip of his tongue. It tasted like nausea, but he just had to know. “Is-is there someone else?”

Zehra flinched as she looked at his distraught face for a flash of a second. She said nothing, but her breath quickened. She stubbed the smoke out and lit another, her hand trembling with the lighter as she flicked it once, twice. It blazed and she exhaled a short, quick tuft of smoke. Ryan’s fists clenched as the dread inside churned into something he could not recognise, still in total disbelief.

“Zehra, look at me.” He said, his voice no louder than a whisper. “H-How? Who? Zehra, I…”

Teardrops began to form in her eyes, she wiped each one before they touched the cheeks, the cheeks whose moles Ryan dreamed of kissing each night before shut eye, warming himself with the sound of her name. “You weren’t around, Ryan.” she said “I needed you, and you weren’t there.”

All at once, the burning string cracked within Ryan to empty him of feeling. Perhaps it was too much for his body to bear or perhaps something simply crumbled under the weight, he could not speak nor think, nor even feel. She was sitting before him as she was, as she always was, but in spite of himself and in spite of his body being there with her, he was not. The tears ceased their leaking from his face, the breaths shallowed, the only sensation he could identify was a sharp discomfort beneath the sternum. Without willing it, without even looking at her any longer, he found himself on his feet moving languidly away from the table, away from the smell and the sight of her, he pushed the door of the cafe open and entered the street. The afternoon sun hit him with special ferocity, he could feel the full summer strength of it against his skin. It was the only feeling he welcomed.

Zehra watched him leave with her brows furrowed and her arms folded defiantly. She called after him, but he didn’t hear. She picked her phone up and called twice. No answer. She looked at the table and sighed, dropped some cash, stepped out of the cafe and hailed a taxi which she got into without an emotion in her face. While the taxi moved away from where Ryan went, the waitress moved to the two drinks left at the table, bereft of all their heat and their taste, picked them up and poured them away, never to be drunk.

2

How did a month pass? How did a single minute pass? How did the world keep turning when all I wished for ever since was the sweet release of death? Ryan thought in the dim light, as he ran his eyes along the silhouette of the naked woman in bed beside him. Her back was turned to him and her hair was curly and free, he leaned in and breathed the smell of her in. He kept inhaling with his eyes shut tight in the hope that these thoughts might be dissipated- cocoa butter, boredom, futility. He sighed, stood up out of bed with his prick and balls swaying in the night air, walked out of the bedroom and onto a balcony where he smoked, worn from weariness.

His temples throbbed as he pondered this night, the first time he’d been out in a month. The only alteration to the same day he’d been living on and on for what the calendar called a month and what he called a searing eternity.

“Look, you can only mope for so long” said Aaron, his friend whose friendship only lingered for they’ve known one another since kindergarten “She’s getting her rocks off every night with that motherfucker, and what are you doing? Writing poems to her? I love you, my man, and I’m saying this because I do- that’s cuckold behaviour. We’re hitting the club tonight, we’re getting your noodle wet and there’s not a damn thing you’re doing to stop it.”

So with more than a little dread in his chest, Ryan combed himself and perfumed himself and dressed like a stag seeking to spill into a mare and went with Aaron and two of his friends to a club called The Pearl where they met some girls with a tantalising sparkle in their eyes. Drinks poured, some danced, a few already began getting it on. One of them, with hair curly and free, with plush lips and mischief strewn across her high cheekbones, shone desire towards Ryan. He saw it, but could not bring himself to feel anything for it. Aaron pulled him aside and shoved a drink in his hand, saying “Listen, she digs you. Let’s go!”

“Go where?” Ryan replied “What the fuck am I going to do with her? I’ll only wind up crying and calling her the wrong name.”

“Jesus.” Ryan exclaimed as he pulled Aaron by the elbow away from the crowd. “How many times have we been through this?”

“It’s never been like this. I’m not one of these guys, man. I don’t just fuck and forget.” Ryan protested as he gulped his drink down.

“I’m not asking you to fuck and forget. I want you to get over it just like every other man who’s been cheated on gets over it- banging your way through. You know I’ve been through it. Who hasn’t? It takes away any self esteem you ever had. This is the only way you’re getting it back. I’m not even asking you to enjoy it. Just give it a shot. Trust me.”

“But I can’t feel anything for her. How am I supposed to get it up?”

Aaron shook a glass of whiskey in his face.

“That’s guaranteeing it won’t get up.” said Ryan.

“They call it liquid courage for a reason. Now, bottom’s up.”

Ryan gulped it as instructed and, in doing so, found the part of his mind that is pure feeling lulled to a nonsensical murmur as the raw animal took centre stage and whispered ‘you know what she must be doing, that gorgeous whore. How much more proof do you need that there is nothing more than meat rubbing on meat? Go and be like them, there is no other way, go and rub your flesh on hers and stick it inside of her, you know you want to, you have to, go and prove to her that you can.’

He returned to the curly girl, grinning the grin of cocktail courage with a sprinkle of something in the vein of sin, and played the role of the cocky cock so well that her palm began to graze his arm between giggles and soft motions, thick with enticement.

What’s your name, what do you do, no way that’s fascinating, oh of course, mm hmm, wonderful, wonderful, I know, I feel the same, tell me more, more, more…and, just so, it went on until small talk was banished by more liquor into the place where desire could at last confess. Ryan was rusty, but he mustered up enough through the signs she threw his way and, though he really wasn’t listening to a thing with true intent and certainly wasn’t feeling more than just drunk and somewhat horny, he managed to say ‘your lashes are so lovely, each time they close something shatters inside me, and it’s as though the only thing to fix it is the moment they look at me again.’

A cold wind blew the ash off the cigarette on the balcony, he flicked it and found his balls shrivelling. He snickered as he looked back at the curly girl on the bed, knowing full well that as soon as he said that line the game was his. How’d he know? Because he’d used it before, it had come from him truly because it was said to the only one he felt truly for. And what was left to be done with that truth but mutilation? So he spat it at the girl on the bed, and she spat the spreading of her legs in return.

Ryan flicked the butt of the smoke away and went back into the room. His criticism rolled along each curve of her nudity and found only what was lacking. When they were at it, he took many arduous minutes to get hard, and he only did when she asked if something was wrong. His reply was to rub furiously and all that amounted to was a half-hard thing, but thankfully his tongue managed to put her to sleep without total disappointment. She was young and so, everything was taut and comely, but the few stretch marks along the side of where her hip became her ass and the broadness of her shoulder blades and the lack of grace in her stride made him grit his teeth bitterly. As he stood leaning against the wall, he watched the ceiling fan turn languidly on and on and, before he could catch himself, he whispered ‘I’m sorry.’

Unsure of where the words came from or even who they were said to, the very utterance sent a wave of something terrible along his spine that caught at his throat and made him choke, choke until it appeared in tears from his eyes. Tears that crinkled the skin of his face and clenched his jaw and made him snarl softly. Tears that kept falling in spite of every effort to stifle them. ‘I’m sorry’ he said ‘I’m so sorry.’ With every helpless utterance, his bewilderment with himself grew and twisted until fury emerged. He slapped a palm tight over his mouth to muffle the snarl that escaped. In between every blink of his eye was the image of Zehra’s neck being licked by another as she moaned louder than he ever made her moan. In between every breath he found nausea coursing like molten tar as she slurped every drop of another, laughed at the jokes of another, looked in the eyes of another with the sweetest smile of belonging, made promises to another and kept them because he deserved them, he was what she yearned for, he was what she deserved.

Ryan shut the bathroom door as softly as he could, then leaned against the wall and slunk to the floor, the tiles were cold but he hardly felt them. His fingers clenched his hair, every muscle of his face trembled tightly as he sputtered as softly as he could “Please, please, for god’s sake, get out of my head, get the fuck out of my head, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, just go, just fucking die please, I’m sorry, leave me…please…”

A knock came on the door, a gentle inquiring knock, a concerned one. “Ryan? Are you okay?” she asked. His face froze, the snot dribbling to the corner of his lip. Salt. Embarrassment. Disgust. He stood up and turned the tap open.

“I’m alright, I’m alright.”

“Do you need anything?”

“Nope.”

“Come back to bed. Warm me.”

“Be there in a bit.”

He stood by the sink, splashing water on his face until he heard her footsteps recede. Then, he towelled off and scowled at his puffy crimson eyes in the mirror. He opened the door and walked swiftly back towards the bed and got in under the sheets with his back to her, she wrapped an arm over him and leaned in. The heat of her body comforted nothing.

“Who were you talking to?” she asked.

“No one. Go to sleep.”

She lingered close to him for a moment longer, then moved away to the far side of the bed and turned away. Dawn was only minutes away and the chirping of the birds grew aggressive as an alarm clock. Ryan lay motionless with the same things spinning in his head, the same things that came every night, every single night. He’d tried to accept it as his own special hell, his private prison that was still sweet because it contained the face of the shrine that he once worshipped at, it was the closest he could be to her so he welcomed all this revulsion, all this sorrow, dejection, hopelessness. But the pain was just too much. Something had to be done, he knew it. He hadn’t written a thing since that dreadful day and he’d been avoiding it ever since because he knew that it would cement something he didn’t want cemented. It would confront. It would make the end all too real to bear. Yet, something had to give.

He turned around to look at her and, seeing the same silhouette, feeling the same nothing, wondering just what he was still doing there and finding no answer, stood up, put his clothes on quietly, pocketed his things and walked out of the room into the hall where the blue beginning of daylight streamed through the blinds and, without a word, shut the living room door behind him.

3

“Love?” said Aaron, his face warmed by the light of the golden hour, “How fucking old are you, my man? It’s about time this schoolboy shit dies.”

“Schoolboy? What do you mean?” replied Ryan, walking languidly along the street with him.

“Love, my friend, is a fucking myth. The books cooked it up to give us something to dream about as teenagers, the movies kept that dream going, and we’re all hypnotised by its bullshit until we experience it for ourselves. Then, we learn the truth. And, for most of us, the dream vanishes. For the saps, they keep trying to reach something that’s impossible and their life is miserable for it. Don’t be one of those, Ryan. For fuck’s sake, you’re too smart for that.”

“What’s life for then, if not love?”

“Every pleasure under the sun. Experiencing it. Bathing in it. Making money, spending money, and fucking as often as humanly possible. That’s all you really need.”

“Sounds like a pretty hollow existence.”

“It’s how you see it. You’ve never experienced what I’m talking about, so you don’t know how full it can be, how…invigorating. You’re only seeing it from your sad lover boy view. I thought a good fuck would cure this, but shit…it’s gotten chronic.”

“It’s not a fucking illness, you materialistic cunt. There’s more to life than skin-level shit. You’re too young to fathom that.”

“I’m three years older than you, fuckhead. You just use words like fathom to seem older and more interesting.”

“No, I’ve just read more and I feel more and it’s made me privy to things that take a lifetime to understand. Things like what true love means.”

“And what’d that understanding bring you? A bitch that cheated on you and left you in the dirt.”

Ryan stopped in his tracks, staring at the pavement. Aaron knew he’d gone too far and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why? It’s the truth.” Ryan replied softly, his mouth curled into a scowl that slackened a bit as he placed a cigarette in. They walked the rest of the way in silence until they arrived at the bar.

It was relatively empty for a Saturday evening, but the sun hadn’t set yet. The two took a seat at a small round table by the far side of the room as Steely Dan played softly on the speaker nearby. Aaron ordered a tower of beer, then said

“Listen, I was out of line. I’m sorry.”

“No, you weren’t. I need a reality check now and then and you give me that. I value it. But…the problem isn’t you. I know why you think this way about love. The world’s done it to you. It’s done it to everyone. I mean, romance…is finished. It’s only as grand as buying flowers or a candlelit dinner or watching a movie under a blanket.”

“But isn’t that enough? What more do you need?”

“A heart roaring its eternal promise.”

“And what in the fatherly fuck does that mean?”

“I can’t explain it. You’ve got to be a sad sap to get it.”

“Come on. You call yourself a poet. Paint a picture for me.”

“How can I? If someone writes you a letter, and it’s an honest heartfelt letter, it’s just a thing that was given to you, words on a page and nothing more than that. You’ll say ‘Aw, that’s sweet’ and read it once and pay it no more mind. But the words themselves, they’re the declaration, the confession, the splayed tenderness of that person proclaiming that you are as dear to them as clouds to the sky. But it’s just a thing to you, it was just a thing to that bitch I wasted my love on, and it will always be just a thing to everyone else in this sans-romance sewer of a world.”

“Doesn’t it get lonely up on that high horse of yours?”

“Sure it does. But I’m alone…with my integrity. I’m alone with my belief. What the fuck do you believe in? Sex and money? That only works for hollowed out human beings. It’s a damn shame that you’ve let yourself become that. You used to have a fucking soul. You let these half-living people snatch it from you.”

“Dude, get it through your thick skull. If it’s just you shouting that you’re greater than everyone else then it has to be you with the problem. You’re addicted to feeling superior.”

“Addicted? Addicted?! You need a higher vocabulary to understand what the fuck it means to LOVE! Shit, forget what you need, you couldn’t ever love…it’s beyond you. Why did Van Gogh cut his ear off for a prostitute? All you’ll say is- he was mad. You know, Wagner, on his wife’s birthday he brought an orchestra to her window and conducted a symphony he’d written and practised in secret to begin her morning. That’s a heart roaring its eternal promise. Tell me, what’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever done? What’s your most loving act besides paying for a dinner and a cab home, or buying a fucking plan B pill?”

“You’re a real asshole.”

“Of course you’ve got no answer.”

“What’s yours, then? Writing a poem? Fuck’s so special about that, huh? Oh, I thought of you and wrote to you and oh, I care about you so much it makes my heart hurt oh-so-much. What in the fuck is so grand about it? A symphony at breakfast, I can accept. Words on a page? Fucking get over yourself.”

“I wrote her a goddamn novella and she never read it.”

“What’s that?”

“A short novel. About her. About our love. It was going to be her birthday gift.”

“So you were gifting her a chore for her birthday? Christ, no wonder.”

“No wonder what?”

The tower of beer was set down on the table, its golden bubbles covering Aaron wholly while two mugs were poured by the waiter and placed in front of the two men. The waiter smiled politely in the thick of their silence and retreated. Ryan moved the tower aside and stared at Aaron, expectantly, defiantly. Aaron said nothing. Ryan lifted the mug, Aaron mirrored him, they clinked glasses and gulped mouthfuls down. “No wonder…” Ryan continued, lighting up another smoke “…she cheated on me.”

“My man” Aaron said “I love you, but you’re legitimately insane.”

“Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”

“I think you have to believe that you’re god’s special child. You need it. It’s the only way to justify your insanity.”

“You say you love me, but you’ve never loved a thing in your life but yourself. I don’t know why I love you, I can admit that, but don’t lie to yourself about how you feel. You feel fondly for the people who give you what you want.”

“You know better about how I feel, right?”

“I can make inferences.”

“You don’t give me much more than a headache. Still, I’m here.”

“I’m granting you the gift of being away from yourself. That’s why you’re here. My face could just as well be someone else’s, it’s all the same to you. I am just the thing that’s keeping you occupied, away from silence. Just like every other smiling zombie in here.”

Ryan’s head did a sweep of each table of the half-full bar: to a man and to a woman, all office workers relishing in their day off, IT yuppies whose dreams are all the same simple ascension from the middle class their parents raised them in to the next rung of the rat ladder at the price of nothing more than their souls. What’s a soul? They asked. Oh, nothing that need concern you ever again replied the churning wheel of commerce. Ryan’s nose turned as though a bad smell had entered. His teeth gritted. His whole countenance twisted when he saw two girls at a corner table. One of the two was tapping her slippered foot against a table leg to the beat of the song with a smile on her face and a flick of her hair, she was lovely to behold and it only worsened Ryan’s revulsion. His gaze returned to Aaron who huffed on his cigarette with tightened temples and flared nostrils, looking at the same girls too.

When the eyes of one of the two fell upon him for a moment, his face melted to what might appease best. He grinned mischievously and straightened his posture. She looked swiftly away but, at the last moment that her gaze held his, broke the smallest of grins. This was enough for Aaron, he got up and moved straight to their table. The girl took a sip of her drink, whispering to her friend and sitting in defiant expectation as he approached. He leaned down with his arms on the table, ensuring they notice his flexed triceps. And notice they did, he elicited a giggle and took it as an invitation. Not looking at Ryan, he walked back and carried his chair to their table, sat down with them and ordered a round of drinks. Ryan, bemused and peeved but unequivocally curious, watched. Many of the IT yuppies with their beer-swollen guts and woebegone hairlines watched too.

In minutes, he had the both of them giggling. One girl pointed towards Ryan, Aaron shook his head dismissively and held her hand. Ryan waited for an invitation or a better acknowledgement than that but thirty minutes passed just so until Aaron stood up with the pretty one and walked out of the bar with his arm around her waist. He didn’t even look at Ryan. The other girl had indignation written across her face and it added allure that wasn’t there just moments before. Ryan was drawn to it, moved by it, he’d had his fill of drink enough to act on impulse and save the thinking for later. She looked his way, at the doorway, then to him, then back to her cocktail. Ryan walked to her, his eyes slightly droopy, his disposition relaxed and tinged with the kind of sadness that remains when anger has run its course.

“I guess they’ve left the both of us alone.”

She nodded, pouting. “Guess so.”

“Mind if I sit here?”

“Sure. You can buy me a drink too, make up for it.”

“For what?”

“Ignoring me all evening.”

“Me, ignoring? You were all over Aaron.”

“My friend was. I was just…amusing myself.”

“Well, in that case…” Ryan motioned the waiter over and ordered another round. “What’d he say to her?”

“Oh, nothing big. I didn’t hear it, but it doesn’t take much.”

“For her?”

“Yeah. She’s easy like that.”

“And you?”

“You’ll just have to find out, won’t you?”

It was hardly difficult for Ryan to take the conversation from here to the place that was obvious and seemingly inevitable, but having it be placed on a platter like so didn’t entice him enough. He wondered if it was just that it’s too easy or perhaps it’s the total emptiness and disinterest with which he remembered the other night with the curly haired one or, merely, if it’s a result of his still-wounded heart that he didn’t, as any other male in his position would, take her to bed immediately. She wasn’t bad looking, her figure was good, skin dewy, lips soft and wanting, and yet Ryan chose to stay there and ask instead the question he burned to ask every person he ever saw that always received the most tepid of responses, sending him yawning and puking with equal fervour. Still, he asked “Why are you alive? What makes you burn for life? What are you mad about?”

Slightly perturbed by the question, she leaned back in her chair and pulled her dress down a bit to keep the cleavage perched at maximum. Ryan noticed, but looked with more keenness at her eyes, searching for something ponderous, something other than what he’s found.

“Hmm…a tough question to just throw out there like that. I mean…how do you answer that? You tell me first. Why are you alive?”

“To write. I write poetry.”

“Poetry, huh? Have you pub…”

“No. I write for myself. I might read you something later tonight if you’d…”

“But that’s all? You’re living just to write? Not for people, for new experiences, travel, just…to put words down on a page?”

“I’m not talking about participating in the human carnival, it’s a fun place for sure and there’s plenty of that to be had, but what does one do beyond just playing the same game everyone’s playing?”

“You’re not making much sense.”

“Who are you beyond your job, your role in your family, your country, your religion, your favourite band…who is in there?” Ryan pointed a finger at her breasts with eyes wider than usual.

“I’m just…me. Isn’t that enough? I mean, we’re all like a mixture of all those things. It’s what makes you, you and me, me. What’s beyond it?”

“Infinity, if you have the courage to seek it.”

She got quiet and lit a cigarette. One arm was crossed beneath her breasts that were comelier than Ryan gave them credit for. The skin was glistening and he noticed the patterns of the pores with a thin film of sweat glazed over the curve in the warm light of the bar, he tried to focus on that and forget any other expectation, he willed his cock to take over and, as he swallowed the last of his drink, more inhibition escaped him. She clearly wanted to speak about something else, she’d certainly be delighted if the conversation was about her and about the beauty that she wished to hold but simply could not. She wanted Ryan to convince her otherwise. He knew it. He’d always found it difficult to lie but not on matters such as these because he had nothing but empathy for women who were not immediately sought after- the afterthoughts, the ones who are chosen when the freshest flowers have already been picked. He prided himself on his ability to seek out beauty where it seemed there was none. When he looked at most women, he saw no beauty. Even the ones that the other guys yowled for, he saw something empty inside of, something rather deplorable underneath that shiny veneer they polished. It was all the more deplorable because they polished nothing more than that surface and let the insides slip into nothing with hubris and glee. It simply could not turn him on, and it seemed he was the only one afflicted by this problem. So, his eye was drawn to the afterthoughts, and they had quiet secrets tucked away beneath their indignation, he found allure in their weariness and something magical in their sadness. Some of them even tried to be more than just the pretty idyll, he appreciated these the most.

This girl, however, whose name he couldn’t be bothered to ask for, who didn’t bother to ask him either, who just wanted a beacon of attention to shoot her way and so plonked her mounds on the table and said ‘entertain me’, this girl possessed nothing beautiful. She was just as bland as the others. Still, Ryan felt a throb in his cock as he stared beneath her neck and suspected that the barely-veiled secret beneath that dress must be some kind of sight to behold. Though annoyed at another disappointing reply to his most precious question, he switched subjects and spoke of her eyes like stars dipped in caramel and her hair like raven vines holding those same stars up in the sky. She gobbled it up because there was nothing else around and the face saying it was not unattractive and, soon enough, he was lying in her bedroom as she slipped the dress down and confirmed Ryan’s suspicion.

His head was spinning from all the drinking, he wanted it this way so he could go through with it but was now afraid that the drink would keep him too soft to even try. He pulled his shirt off. She crawled to him with just her black lace panties on and he watched how her waist descended so gently into her hips and how it swayed as it came closer. She unbuckled his jeans and pulled them off. He was soft. She was disappointed. She took it in her mouth and it was warm and wet and it felt good, but she didn’t move, she just kept it there like a mother bird waiting to feed its babies. He held her head and moved it, she obliged to his motions and he reached half-mast. She pulled it out and licked the tip a little. “Your turn” she smiled and lay down beside him, slipping the panties off. He descended between her thighs and got to work. She moaned often, performatively, and got wet quickly. Ryan mounted, but was soft again. He tugged on it. She tugged on it. He apologised. She smiled and stuck her tongue in his mouth. He stuck his tongue on her breasts and tugged some more, to no avail. Tired now, utterly uninterested, Ryan looked at her and said “you mind if we just…lie down for a while?”

“Sure” she said.

He lay beside her as she let out a sigh. He leaned down and kissed the side of her arm, asking “Do you want to hear a poem of mine?”

“Mm-hmm.”

On the rare occasion that any interest for his poetry is shown, Ryan selects the poem based on the company. A cerebral one for a thinker, a stream of consciousness one for a pretentious thinker, an erotic or romantic one for the masses or for a woman he’s looking to lay, and his favourites solely for himself. Here, he was too drunk to choose or to care and just wanted to hear it out loud so, without a second thought, began to read his latest one. The one he wrote when he stormed out of the girl’s room the other night-

“This one’s for someone who…hurt me. It’s called Vomit.

I ache for your face

so I can spit on it,

shove it in a pile of shit and

fling it to the highway,

roaring to the sky that you’ve

torn me

as a truck charges down

and crashes

your bones and screams

to stillness.

I’ll pick what’s left

and smear it over every part

of my naked body

so I can have you as mine

finally

as I lie down into your remains

and breathe in that scent

that magnificent scent

thinking about the cocks you collect

the eyes of allure you shoot at all of them

as they shoot inside

you,

dirty whore

unworthy whore

you spurned me

like the world spurns

the word

of every erupting soul

daring to love

a pestilence,

murdered by the cruelty

of indifference.”

“What the fuck is this? Jesus, it’s disgusting! I don’t want to hear this shit.”

“Hold on…it gets better. Don’t interrupt. I’m really getting somewhere here.”

“This isn’t poetry, it’s…I don’t know what you call this. Why are you even reading this to me? What the…”

“It kills most deeply

when you let it all down

and allow yourself to believe

that maybe this one

this one

is something special

something more.

Oh, you don’t know how wrong you can be

until you’ve felt that stabbing

of reality

over

and over again

and still

dared

to believe.

Of course

you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about,

your horizon is from

that guy’s lap

to the next one’s.”

“Okay, I think you should leave. This is…too much for me. I’m sorry.”

“Sure, I’ll go but let me finish, for fuck’s sake.”

“No, please. I don’t…”

“You gave me nothing

but a question,

answer it if you can”

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She started shouting for him to get out, but Ryan only shouted each word louder and with more vehemence as he stood up and picked his pants up with one hand. Still naked, he continued.

“answer it if you dare

answer it if you’re anything more than

a hole

a disappointment

a speck of the same sludge

this cancer of a world breeds

by the billions

every

fucking

day-

Who

is the most damned creature of all?

1) The blind dreamer

betting on a flower

to bloom

at night

or

2) The deaf beauty

turning tricks

to escape the clutches

of silence.”

Ryan pulled the pants on and the shirt and the shoes, and moved to the door as she shouted from behind “That’s a fucking poem like a fart is music! Disgusting misogynistic bullshit! What the actual fuck! I don’t ever want to see…”

“Way ahead of you.” Ryan said, grinning as he slammed the door behind him. That was the best review he could’ve hoped for, he knew now that the poem was truly powerful.

4

What is wrong with me, that I come home and cry every time I’ve laid my tongue on a new woman? What is wrong with me, that I cannot just ride the ride and enjoy its simple thrill? Why do I still cling to this idiotic thing called love when it’s crystal clear that it exists nowhere else but in this mad head of mine? Why can I not lose it? Why can I not cash it in and just be content with the cycle of transient pleasure that the rest are so comfortable with? Because I am the outlier, I hold inside me the last truly beating heart, my incapacity to be as them is my strength for it is the most intimate evidence that I am more, I feel more, think more, live more, it is this more that she could not bear to be around, it reminded her too often of her inadequacy, it shone a beacon on her pitifully passionless existence, she needed to find another unremarkable fencepost who bleated to the same tune as she did and of course she found him, the sample space was only the entire fucking planet.

The skin is too tight around my body, it’s strangling the muscle and clogging the blood inside and each breath I take chokes. I can’t sleep, I can’t think, I can’t understand why I am plagued by her face every day and every night. Was it really so unfair that I needed some time alone? Was that enough reason to rip my love apart and burn it at the stake? Is this all there is to human connection any more, this reciprocity of empty bleating, material exchange, meat exchange, all in total ignorance of the spirit? With these other girls, I don’t even know their names, I tried to turn the lights down in my eyes and see no face and only feel from the cock but it has not worked once. I am beset by the union of sex and love, I can only be truly hard to make love…is that really so wrong? Tell me, you bitch, you fucking whore, I love you, I love you so much, I miss you and I hate that I miss you and I’ll fucking kill you if I see you, tell me what the fuck is so wrong with loving truly, with living fully, with being mad for creation…it is the act of love itself and you wanted something else? I might’ve accepted it if it was just you, but it’s clear that it’s everyone, every single soul-decrepit zombie I know and find in every crevice of this city. I can be nowhere else, I can touch the heart of no other truly living thing, so hear me now you whore-

I give up. I hang up my heart right here and cash it in. There is no hope for anything true, so I burn truth henceforth and go into the herd as another thoughtless self-affirming husk spewing the same things, doing the same things, dying in the same typical homogenous manner a little bit every day. And it begins with sticking my dick in everything I see. I hope you’re watching. I hope you’re happy. You did this to me, and I thank you for it.

Ryan leaned away from the notebook and heaved a deep sigh. He lit up a cigarette and it tasted good, like it does after sex or a wearisome workout. He took another swig from the bottle of wine by the notebook and found that his indignation remained unresolved. Needing now to point it at a different face, he picked his phone up and dialled Aaron. It rang all the way through, no answer. He dialled again. The same. It was past ten on a weeknight so he had to be free, Ryan refused to be ignored after the events of Saturday. He dialled again. On the last ring, Aaron answered.

“Yeah?”

“You’re ducking my calls too now?”

Aaron sighed.

“Nothing to say?”

“I’ve said all I have to say.”

“You just fucked off…and you’re not going to apologise?”

“You said some nasty shit.”

“And I meant it all. You proved it when you walked out.”

“Look, I don’t need this shit. How much do I owe you from the bar? I’ll send it straight away. After that, I want nothing to do with you.”

“Oh, is that how you want to play this? Fuck your money. I just wanted to say…you were right.”

“About what?”

“The time for love, it’s over.”

“You’re drunk.”

“And seeing clearly, at last.”

“So…is that it, then? That’s why you called?”

“I called to fix things, but since that’s clearly not happening…I want to tell you just how typical and despicable you are, how empty your spirit is, how much closer you are to a dog than a man, you waste of breath, you fucking…”

The phone clicked.

Ryan tried calling a few more times.

No answer.

He started typing a long, droning text to him that went something like this:

…mediocrity seeks to murder anything that rises above it….I wish I could say I was disappointed in you, but you’re exactly as I thought you were and it only brings bitterness to my heart…someday, at some point, what’s left of your soul will come knocking on your door and it will be such pain that you’ll want to run from it. If you do, it will be the end of you. At least, what’s left of you. When that comes, don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Hit send, but the message didn’t go.

He realised he’d been blocked and started to snicker.

Good riddance.

He took another swig from the bottle and stepped out to the balcony to smoke in the cool night breeze. Three storeys down, beneath the amber street light, dogs snarled at each other with special violence. There were five in all, one a bitch in heat. The dogs took warning snaps of their jowls at each other to mount her. One got on, another bit him in the ass, then another came in to attack the two, the sounds were loud and ugly and ferocious. Ryan was disturbed but couldn’t look away. The bitch tried to run from all four but the biggest dog which wasn’t part of the fight chased after her and mounted. She whimpered and struggled, but gave in. He thrusted rapidly, as though his death was imminent, and shot deep and full inside her. The other dogs lost interest summarily and slunk away, two were limping, all three were bleeding. The bitch and the big dog stood leg-locked at the end of the street. Their silhouette seemed to tell Ryan something, but all he made of it was more repulsion for the world. He flung his cigarette butt in their direction and returned to the room holding his phone.

Another hit of the bottle. The clang of its bottom as it came down against the table was solid and comforting. Without a thought, he had a picture of Zehra on the screen: She was laughing, a whole and full laugh, she was in love with the man behind the camera, she wore a white tank top and bell-bottom jeans, her hair was up in a bun and she’d a half-eaten brownie on her plate and he’d just told her a joke. It was rare that she’d laugh like that at something he’d said, it was typically only when the butt of the joke was him. But every time it came, he was as fuzzy as could humanly be. A drop of water fell onto her cheek where Ryan’s thumb had been caressing. He touched his face and found that he was crying. He flung the phone away and took another hit from the bottle. He held his face in his hands and, as dogs howled from blocks away, sobbed as softly as he could.

Then, his stomach turned and his head throbbed. He ran to the bathroom and fell on his knees by the toilet. His gut heaved inward and it all spewed out quickly- dinner, then the liquor, then some other stuff for good measure. He rinsed his mouth, wiped off and returned to the bottle, laughing somewhat pitifully.

5

Listening to the Chilli Peppers one evening as he did his daily workout, Ryan could make special sense of the line there’s a devil in my dick and some demons in my semen. Only, he found that his devil and demons only came out to play when the sun set. And they were relentless, he was caught under a spell and he really began to swing beneath that spell, he took to it like a fish to water. The training wheels were off and he was coasting. It began with a call to every acquaintance he had until some agreed to hit the clubs with him, which didn’t take long for the list was short. They stood around and tried their best, but none were as relentless as Ryan. He approached the women with a special compulsion. As soon as disinterest came, he rode the wave of that dejection right onto the next one and the next until he found success, every single night. Some were in awe, some were concerned but never enough to voice it. If any did, Ryan would only have cackled into a new set of lips. His ego swelled with each rise and fall of his prick between another set of comely legs. He spoke the same lines to each one, he swept his hair back in the same manner, he looked straight into the eyes and rolled his r’s with greater care and was continually surprised by just how easy it was. Look the part, play the part, and it all opens up effortlessly. There was a certain warmth that Ryan found inside this place, not belonging and certainly not kinship, he was being fed by the collective gaze of these women that approved his value to himself and told him that he was worth being ushered into tomorrow. And tomorrow, he would have to seek that approval once more. Some days, when the pickings were slim, he didn’t. On those days, he had to drink himself to sleep. But those were few and far between. Half a dozen went by fecklessly, easily, over three weekends. None compelled a repeat visit. Some of those weren’t even fully fucked for Ryan had had too much to drink and too little to feel for their curves, colours, odours. To improve efficiency, he moved away from the clubs and got on the apps instead. It was quicker and even easier. In some cases, the conversation was almost exclusive to the few texts before meeting. Then, it was home free.

With two of them, he didn’t see light enough inside the eyes to bother with the question but with four, perhaps because he needed to, he saw a hint of something and so asked “what makes you mad for life?”

The first answer- Fucking. He respected her honesty and, so, managed to go all the way with her. Would you know, she swallowed every drop of his sticky response.

The second and third answer- nothing.

The fourth answer- sleep.

None of these dissuaded any longer, they didn’t even disappoint. All they managed was to bring a tinge of bitterness to his tongue when he ran it along their clits but that was sweetened by the song of their voices as they moaned and cussed to the wind at the mercy of his mouth and his fingers and his cock, it was a song to subsume all else. With the many that followed, he didn’t bother asking the question. It was a ridiculous one anyway, an unfair one that had no place in this century, in this time, with these people, with himself even. He hadn’t written a thing the past three weeks and, in that time, felt a vacancy that continually grew rather unbearable. It was always this way when he hadn’t written for a while, order was lost and feelings were not coherent and all that affected him hurt further for they could not be made clear sense of. So, he started writing about each exploit after it occurred. To his dismay, he found that each warranted no more than a few paragraphs and they all amounted to the same thing. He tried distinguishing between their features and painting himself as some sort of sensualist, but that didn’t work either. He could smell his own disingenuousness. So, he flirted with the word now and then but kept most of his attention on the prize. The accumulation of the prize.

Soon enough, the soft plop of their bodies placed down, waiting to be ploughed, took precedence over all else. He found that he was at full mast with each one, no matter whether he knew her name, whether he liked the way she smelled, whether he was too drunk to discern her eyes from her neck. He kept going and, even in the act, often saw himself out of his own body, watching his muscles and his heart and his loads fall from one cunt into the next- shaven ones, bushy ones, shy slits, fat layered ones, button nipples, saucers, floppy full buffets too- each and all became indistinguishable in the blur of more poured upon more. He recognised himself no longer. He was only as good as the potency of his last fuck, he was only as alive as his eagerness for the next fuck, and the hollowness that came in between said fucks was inundated with enough distraction to convince him that it wasn’t there at all.

Six months passed.

The number of women moved beyond his ability to count. As Ryan stepped out of the shower and towelled off, he gave his naked body a once-over in the mirror and noticed a discolouration on his penis. Alarmed, Ryan moved closer and pulled the skin back from the glans to take a closer look. A patch of deeper red almost glowed along the side of the pink head. It looked alarming, but did not itch. He panicked for a moment, but convinced himself that it was nothing. A week later, he checked and the colour was deeper. It even had a subtle indent along its edges. Now, he knew something was wrong. He went to the doctor and when the results of the tests were told to him, his heart sank, his breath ceased and a numbness set into his ears. They had to repeat it half a dozen times for Ryan to hear “venereal…chancre…primary stage syphilis.”

6

The sheer contrast between the life Ryan used to live in the bosom of love’s bounty and the life he lived now became garish and unavoidable. With nowhere to run from it, he stayed indoors and did little else but write:

I have brought disgrace upon my soul, the only thing I ever cherished, my most precious possession, the source of all goodness and all forgiveness and all that was sweet about my worn wounded heart. I don’t remember any longer why I sought to do it, it just seemed the only way. I wanted to run, I wanted to piss on my dreams with insipid reality. I went and burrowed my mind in the mirror-holes of the philistines and this is what I got. I deserve what I got. They’ve asked me to go to the hospital for an antibiotic injection, and I refuse to go. What is left to be experienced anyway? I’ve wanted out for as long as I can remember, and now I’ve been given the key. Why would I return it? This disease is the cure, it has opened the path, I need only wait and that’s what I will do. My sins weigh too heavy. My poetry struck lightning nowhere. The nights when I was possessed by the Muse were the golden ones and they made the horror worth bearing, but it doesn’t cut it any longer. The pain outweighs the joy millionfold and everyone has to deny it to keep on but I cannot any more. I’ve no more bullshit to peddle, all I have is the mountain of suffering I’ve been ignoring for so long and I’m crumbling under its weight.

Zehra, you must know that it wasn’t your fault. I know now that it was mine, all mine, I pushed you into his lap. In all this selfishness, I ignored you, I did not listen, did not love you half as dearly as I thought I did. I understand why you thought my words were only words, the actions didn’t express the love within them, I see it clearly. Forgive me, Zehra. I am not me when I’m not loving you. In each of those women, I was searching for your face still. I hated you and, still, wished that each of them was you, hoped that they’d moan as you moan, curl their toes in the way that you would, giggle as sweetly as you did when I’d tickle you, but never once did I find it. Zehra, I’m a sinner and I’m a fucker and I do not deserve you so I will live these last days of my life in penance, that I might perhaps be born again as one worthy of your love. Take this poem, my angel, as a miniscule piece of that penance.

Aching

They split life by the vein

and left my bed empty, I kiss

the cold sheets nonetheless

and remember you

laying here

wrapped in my shirt with a

book in your palm

turning the page

smiling

at me.

They split life by the vein

and joy has left my lip quivering

without tears

without care,

I read your letters

to hold the smell of you again

but it’s

too late

and, with each

day

hour

moment,

too far

from me.

The time that passed in seclusion could’ve been a few days, hours or months, Ryan couldn’t tell. All he did was listen to soft jazz, pore over the notebook and drink. The ferocity with which he was possessed by Zehra’s face was more pronounced than it had ever been, and it only got fiercer with each sunset. All he felt was agony in every moment that he wasn’t writing. When he was writing, it was only akin to popping a painkiller. It didn’t last long. He believed that time would let it pass, but it only worsened his condition. He wondered what might be done, and his wondering only took him to wishing and, evidently, he’d only one wish left- to hear her voice again. He toyed with the idea. It frightened him. He pondered every possibility of the conversation and each speculation ended in more dismay, so he smoked and perished the thought. But, with each sunrise, the wish reappeared with greater will. One drunken afternoon he considered it once more and, remembering his mortality, saw no reason not to do it. So, he took his phone from where he’d flung it days or weeks ago, and called her.

His hand trembled. His breath shook. Each ring was arduously long and the pause between rings told him to drop the phone and run, run as far away as possible, break the phone and flee. On the sixth ring, she spoke.

“Hello?”

Her tone was wary, curious and tinged with annoyance.

“Z-Zehra?”

“Hi.”

“Hi…um…h-how are you?”

“I’m okay. How are you?”

“I…I don’t even know how to answer that any more.”

“Is that why you called me?”

“What? To find out how I am?”

“To feel better.”

“I guess so. Your voice has always soothed me. I hope it’s okay that I’m calling.”

“I don’t know if it is.”

“But you don’t mind?”

She didn’t answer.

It was enough for him.

“I’ve been thinking about you a lot.” Ryan continued “I haven’t been able to stop. Before, I wanted it to stop and I did everything in my power to make it stop. But now, it’s…it feels warm to be haunted by you.”

“Haunted? That doesn’t sound very warm, does it?”

She chuckled as she said it. There was tenderness in her voice.

He caught it instantly and was vivified.

“No, but it is to me.” he continued “It’s all I have left of you.”

“*sigh* I don’t think it’s appropriate to say things like that to me.”

“Why not? I’ve said much more before.”

“That was then. We aren’t together any more.”

“How can I speak to you and not bare every true thing I’m feeling? You pull it out of me. If anything, it’s your fault.”

Chuckling, her voice softened “shut up, idiot.”

“I’d forgotten how sweet your laugh is. Tell me, how are you? Do you still hum when you’re cooking? Do you still smell flowers when you’re anxious?”

“How do you remember that?”

“How could I forget, Zehra?”

Silence for a few moments.

“Ryan, I…didn’t expect you to call. But, I don’t think this is a good idea. I’m glad to hear from you but, please, we can’t…”

“I understand. Can I just ask one question before I go?”

“Okay.”

“Do you still have the poems I wrote to you?”

Silence again.

“Um…Ryan. The way it ended…we…”

“It’s okay, Zehra. I don’t blame you. Take care of yourself, okay? I hope he’s treating you well. You deserve nothing short of worship.”

Ryan hung up and his head hung low as tears streamed again, gushes of tears enough to fill the great pond of melancholia so dry and terrible inside him. He lit up a cigarette and stepped onto the balcony. He grabbed his crotch and squeezed. It didn’t hurt. He squeezed harder until pain shot all the way to his abdomen. He coughed the smoke out and stared out into the bright afternoon sun shining on the rows of plush trees and pedestrians going about their little lives, he bared his teeth and was thankful that the tears blurred his vision of them. He smoked and then he drank and, soon after, fell asleep.

7

Past midnight, Ryan was startled by the sound of his phone ringing. Confused, he lifted it to his face and saw, with disbelief, that it was Zehra. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. Sure enough, it was her. Was it a dream? If it was, he was glad for it. He sat up eagerly and cleared his throat, then took a deep breath and answered.

“Hi, beautiful.”

“Hi. I hope I’m not…were you sleeping?”

“No, no…I was just…waiting for this.”

“You knew I’d call?”

“I hoped.”

“Ryan, it’s…I wanted to say that I’m sorry. For everything. Yes, there were a lot of problems on both our parts but…I was unfair to you. You deserved better than that.”

Ryan was silent now. He didn’t know what to say, he pinched himself and fell further into disbelief. It was real. She said it.

“Ryan?”

“I’m here.”

“Well…are you going to say something?”

“Zehra, you could pour lava on my tongue and I’d still be kneeling on the ground praying to you. It’s okay. It always was and always will be, I told you back then that I love you and I can never stop. I never stopped, beautiful.”

“God, I’ve missed you.” Her voice cracked with relief and ushered through all the tenderness she was hiding.

“You know, I was just writing about you.”

“Really? Read it to me.”

He read Aching.

She let the last line linger for a long while until she said “It’s not too late.”

“What about him?”

“That’s…over. It never should have been in the first place.”

“How come?”

“I realised I don’t want the ordinary. I want passion. Like yours.”

“Am I dreaming?”

“You might just be. Listen, can I come over?”

“Yes, please.”

“Okay. See you in thirty.”

She kissed the phone and Ryan melted. Thirty minutes. His place was a sty. It reeked of cigarettes and old laundry. Giddy and frantic, Ryan rushed to throw the clothes in the washer, swept the floor and lit the scented candles she’d given him ages ago. Then, he dropped and did pushups till he couldn’t. Then, pullups and crunches. Then, jumped in the shower and cleaned every bit of himself. He felt the beard he’d let loose across his chin and decided to shave it. Just as he did, the doorbell rang.

Still in his towel but damn near sparkly, Ryan opened the door to see her- his love, his sweetness standing at the door with a shy grin on her beautiful face. Noticing his attire, she said “Oh? Isn’t that forward.”

“I was just sprucing myself up for my lady. Pardon me.”

“Well, don’t let me interrupt.” She snickered as she stepped inside and embraced him snugly. He held her and breathed the scent of her hair in. Time stood still. Every moment between the last embrace and this vanished. Her leggings lent more grace to the motion of her legs, as though slowed down by the length of each movement. She sat on the couch. Ryan walked into the room to put some clothes on. She followed and said “Stay like that.”

He grinned. She sat on the bed and rifled with a cigarette pack, she offered one to him. They lit up. He sat beside her, incapable of discerning even one of the mélange of emotions coursing inside him. He only knew that he wanted her to be there. He smoked and watched her, in quiet disbelief. She grinned at him, though there was something vacant in her grin.

“This is strange.” He said.

“Why? It’s how it used to be.”

“That’s what’s strange about it. It looks that way, but it’s not…not really.”

“I know. Am I confusing you? I’m sorry. I’m pretty confused myself.”

“Didn’t think I’d like being confused. Where have you been all this time?”

“Let’s forget about all that, Ryan. Does it matter any more?”

“Okay. I don’t mind forgetting it, but I need to tell you…”

“Don’t. Please.”

She stubbed her smoke out in the ashtray. He followed suit. “Come lie down with me” she said as she held his hand and leaned back. He slunk into bed beside her and placed his arm out. She rested on it. They faced each other. The warmth of her breath against his face made him hard. He held her face in the palm of his hand, it only rendered him more disbelieving.

“Why did you come?” he asked

“You didn’t want me to?”

“It’s all I’ve wanted. But it pains. Listen…I have to tell you. I can’t keep it inside me. I’ve been…”

“Ryan. We were going to forget. I don’t want to know, please.”

“Though you believed you had ended it, it never ended for me. I can’t just end it. I don’t know what’s wrong with me but I…I guess I just mate for life. I could not forget you. I could not stop loving you. And still, I became a…I became one of them. I just kept fucking without feeling. It was disgusting but I got addicted to it. I wanted to get back at you and I did it to myself. But each time I was alone, each time I was with them, I only ever wished it was you. I convinced myself that I was cheating on you, but because you already did I forced myself to keep doing it. In a sense, it was to be closer to you by being like you. But more, it was to torture myself for driving you away.”

Zehra leaned away from him and sat up. Ryan did too. She frowned, distraught. Minutes of silence passed until she asked “How many?”

“I lost count.”

“Did you love any of them?”

“Never.”

“Did you date any?”

“No. Just one time, with each. I don’t even remember their names.”

“Jesus, Ryan.”

“I know. I couldn’t keep this from you. I’m sorry.”

“Why? I’m not your girlfriend any more. You don’t owe me an explanation. And, fuck, part of this…is on me.”

“No, it’s not…it’s all my fault.”

She stood up and started pacing along the room, disconcerted.

“You can’t lay something like this on me and take the moral high ground. I mean, you really showed me, didn’t you? Really taught me a lesson. How could you, Ryan? That’s fucking…disgraceful.”

“How could you?”

“That’s not the same at all. It was one guy. It was something real, at least…”

“When you already had something real with me. Are you here because he isn’t giving you enough attention? Just like I wasn’t?”

“How dare you? You think that lowly of me? How could you even ask something like that?”

“That’s what the evidence suggests.”

“Maybe coming here was a mistake.”

“Maybe. But you’re here. Tell me, what’d you do with my poems?”

“My poems. They were written for me. I was angry with you. I wanted to forget you. I threw them away.”

“In the trash? Out the window?”

“*sigh* I tore them and threw them in the trash. Happy?”

Ryan went cold. His tenderness had been steadily dissipating with every passing moment and now was twisted into the same thing that endured when he wrote Vomit. He wanted to murder her. He wanted to marry her. He wanted to hold her till she suffocated then resuscitate her with a ballad of worship. At least, she wouldn’t be able to burn that as she’d burned every other part of his care. Still, he believed in the relentlessness of his care. It was how he measured his love. Nothing could kill it. Not himself, and not every effort of hers to piss it away to smithereens. She might as well have shot him in the chest, but still the will to forgive stood over the terrible, terrible pain. He watched her lips quiver with anger, they were tainted by another’s and yet looked just the same as when they belonged to him. She was standing here in his room, trying to be his, but he was in the way. What a fool. In spite of all the lips he’d tainted himself with, Ryan had won her back with just a phone call. That man’s love had to be piddling for her to return all aflutter. Forgiveness. Mercy. Truth. Hope. And, somehow, the dream will live on. The sweetest dream of all. Ryan realised that he must be above it, so he fell to his knees and wrapped his arms around her waist.

“Baby” he said “It takes every ounce of strength inside me but I can, because I must, I can forgive you. All it will take is for you to forgive me too…and our perfect dream will return.”

She ran her palm through his hair, looking down at him sadly and replied “What if it’s too far gone? God, we’ve made a mess of it all.”

“It’s our mess. We can clean it up.”

Tears rolled down her sparkling eyes. “Ryan, I forgive you.”

“I love you, Zehra.”

“I love you too.”

Both crying, both with a knot of sorrow squeezing at the heart, embraced tightly, aggressively, their breathing was rapid and short and wild. Ryan’s head, buried in her neck, could bear it no more and stole a kiss. Then, another. Zehra trembled and turned into him, asking for more. His lips moved to hers, trembling too. It touched and his entire body howled with wanting. Her mouth, that loveliest of flowers, opened to him. Tongues danced. She undid the towel and it dropped to the floor. She took her top off. He undid the bra. She moaned his name. He pulled her leggings off and her panties fell with them. He picked her up and leaned her naked immaculate beauty against the wall. She reached down and moved him in. He pushed. It was a sensation greater than he ever remembered or ever hoped for. He was home and he kept entering that home with the gentleness of Caravaggio’s brush against the sacred canvas. “Baby, I’ve missed you so much” she whispered in his ear as her tongue ran along the lobe. He lay her down on the bed. It was magic. Wondrous magic. In all the impossibility, all the terrible deeds that might have brought it down to dust, the dream had truly, undeniably returned.

8

It went on for hours, as though they were making up for all the time in between. At the end of the third, with the sun only two hours from rising, she had her fingers intertwined with his as her head rested on his chest, moving up and down with each breath he took, listening to his heart that beat for her alone. She noticed his palm and said “what’s this?”

Ryan, confused, looked at his palm and saw that a faint rash had spread across. It looked like pox, but he knew what it was. He’d forgotten entirely. His heart sank, but he didn’t show it.

“I’m not sure…is it an allergy or…?”

“It doesn’t look like that. You didn’t notice it before?”

She looked at him quizzically, there was still trust in her eyes.

Ryan couldn’t believe himself. His reply came without thought.

“Um…no. No, I didn’t.”

“I think you should get it checked. You might have a fever or something.”

How could he have been so callous? How could he have just forgotten? How could he debase her like this and still only try to cover it up? He did not believe that he could sink lower, and yet here he was. She’d only just returned. Those wisps of magic that were so far from his reach had at once rained down on him again and it was holier than prayer and now, even if he kept the lie going, it was tarnished. What could he possibly do to fix it now? Perhaps, in all the miraculousness of this night, in all that could not have been and yet was, she would forgive even this. They’d get treatment in time and find that even this ordeal had brought them closer. It could be another trial of their faith to each other. She might forgive. She might accept. He had to tell her. He could not live with himself if he did not tell her. He tried to choke words out of him, but nothing came. She saw something wrong and held his cheek, asking him. He choked further. Tears welled in his eyes. She was fearful now. She stood up and kept asking. He leaned against the wall, covering all but his face under the bedsheet, and said

“Zehra, please…please…you have to understand.”

“Understand what, baby? Tell me, what’s wrong? Tell me, what could be so wrong that you’re acting like this? Ryan! Talk to me!”

“Please forgive me” He was sobbing now. Each word sounded like a frozen wail.

“Forgive you for what? Ryan, you’re scaring me!”

“I…I have…syphilis.”

“Idiot! That’s not funny at all! Don’t joke about shit like that!”

She slapped him on the arm. Then, noticing the total absence of amusement, her face sunk slowly into a form of horror he had never seen on any face except in the worst of human times.

She got up and ran to the bathroom. The door slammed open and stayed that way as he heard her retching. Even that was the sweetest of sounds for it came from her, his greatest beauty. Ryan was speechless, frozen, without a thought beyond the dagger of dread piercing his being. He heard the sink flow. He heard water splashing. He heard flushing. He heard more retching and coughing. Then, she rushed out of the bathroom with no grace in her naked movement and frantically picked her clothes from the floor and put them on.

“Please…please…” was all he could bring himself to say. She did not hear it. She refused to look at him. He hid under the sheets and could not move, no matter the yearning. She made for the door and only then did Ryan run after her with the sheets still wrapped around him. “Zehra, Zehra, we’ll go to the doctor, we’ll get treated, it’s still early, it can be fixed, I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking, please, please, it was a stupid mistake, it just slipped my mind, we can fix it, we can be above it, Zehra, our love is enduring, our love can be above even this, please, please don’t go…”

As she held the door open, she froze and turned to face him. Her eyes could not meet his, but she said with as much strength as she could muster “Did you do this on purpose?”

“What? W-Why? Why would I ever?” He reached his hand out but she moved away with violent revulsion. She turned and almost ran down the stairs. He knew going after her was futile. He did not want to believe it yet again, but any attempt from this point on would be in vain. So, he let her go. He closed the door. He slunk to the floor as he seemingly always does and held his palms open, staring at the red dots smeared all across. He studied their pattern, trying to find a message in it, something that would make sense of this enigmatic life of his, incessantly yanking him from one sorrow to the next with total belief that around the corner lies what he’s been praying for, but it never is. He should know better. Why did he call her, when he knew he was infected? Why didn’t he at least put a condom on? How could something as grave as this just slip his mind? Why didn’t he just go to the doctor and get treated? How could he have defiled the love of his life with such nonchalance? Did he do it, deliberately?

9

Moving so slowly that it seemed he was a stationary figure gliding through molasses, Ryan stood before the mirror still thoughtless and benumbed. He pulled the skin of his glans back and looked at the chancre, it was far more pronounced. In a few more weeks, his whole body would be covered with them. Warts. Sores. Pustules strewn across the skin that was kissed by a soft angel subject to the same fate. The real sickness would begin and it would be true atonement, certainly. He looked at his palms again. Her dried moisture on his fingers wafted into his nose. Fever. Hankering. Repulsion. He lit a cigarette and watched his eyes- they were dark and wide with all their tenderness vanquished. He stuck his tongue out and stubbed the cigarette out on the tip. It sizzled and burned and tears welled in his eyes but he made no sound. He threw it on the floor and balled his diseased palms into fists. His reflection defied him, told him that this is all he ever deserved and all his life ever amounted to and nothing more could ever be for one as miniscule as he. It showed him the movie of Zehra running to the doctor and crying to him, running back into that guy’s arms and weeping that she’s only loved him, running into the arms of the next and the next with Ryan’s face and his worship flung away where the pieces of his poems had gone. How could she throw it away like that? How could she just jump from one lap to the next, and claim that it was true emotion, true union of the spirit? He thought about all the loose women and the sleazy men he’d known, weren’t they more honest and therefore purer because they owned what they were doing? They did not hide behind the lie of love the way she did. It was all just for a fuck, just to escape loneliness for a few hours, just to feel good about the self they let rot away, just to sprinkle spice on the mundanity of life. But she? When she receives unabashed attention, she calls it true passion. When he gazes in her eyes longer than her breasts, she believes that he deserves to be blown sloppy, batting her eyes for him to invade her mind and rid it of its noise with all his talk of her beauty, her intelligence, her sensibility, her superiority, and when he begins to neglect that duty for a moment the eyes will shoot somewhere else and luxuriate in the same reverence from a different set of lips, and she’ll call that true love too.

Ryan wished on so many days and nights, with all the desperation curdling inside him, that the spell might be broken, that he could breathe easy and keep on without needing her like the needle to the junky, and never once did it relent. Never once, did her face recede. Every broken heart has begged the wind for an answer to the same question since the dawn of time- What is this thing called love? Ryan had at last found his answer- Compulsion, blossom spiralling forever into decay, saccharine heroin for which there is no cure, the con of all beauty so wondrous from afar that reveals itself, when it’s too late, to be the slowest aguing dagger. He believed that life was too empty to live without love, but now his conviction told him that life was always empty, love was the most vivid distraction from its emptiness, and now that it was gone and all that remained was his disgust for the ceaseless wheel of living and dying, disgust for the human race, disgust for the blood, the diseased blood, coursing from his heart to his diseased prick whose veins still throbbed with the venom of eternal cruelty. All at once, it became clear to Ryan what he had to do.

He raised his fists and drove them straight, with all his force, into the mirror. It cracked, the skin on his knuckles parted. He punched again, then again until shards fell to the floor and all the jagged lines across the smooth silver glass beheld his true face to himself. Pieces of glass were wedged into his fingers, but he felt nothing. He looked at the shard on the floor, looked at his hands whose marks were veiled by the blood from the gashes. He sat at the table beside the mirror, dabbing the blood from his palm in the hairs of his chest, opened the notebook and scrawled ferociously, maniacally, into it.

When he finished, with clear and present composure, he stood up and stared at the glass on the floor again. The sun was up now and its early rays sparkled on the glass like diamonds, like Zehra’s eyes when she’d weep with joy at the poems and prayers he read to her with every fiber of his mortal soul. He picked a large shard from the floor and sat beside the mess he’d made. Gazing in his eyes, he saw no remorse and no desire either. He looked down at his flaccid prick and saw the glowing red of the chancre once more. He brought the shard to the chancre and touched its razor edge to it, dragging it slowly, methodically, along its circumference. He groaned, he felt the pain but it was being sensed by a body that was less him by the moment. The longer he went, the further it all became from him. Blood gushed from his glans. Ryan looked up at the ceiling fan, watching it spin languidly on. He raised the shard up above his head. His breathing hastened. His teeth gritted. He widened his legs as far as they would go and held his balls and his prick together at the base. Growling, spit flying from his mouth in dollops of surrender, he brought the shard down in one violent motion to the middle of his prick. It cut straight through the skin, the flesh, the vessels and nerves and through the scrotum and down through the base out of the skin. The shard cracked. Blood poured between his legs. It was warm. It was right. He lifted the cracked shard up again and, screaming, brought it down to the same place. The pain was excruciating. Ryan wailed, but did not writhe. Staying in just the same place he brought the shard down thrice more until he threw it away and all that remained between his legs was a mangled mess of skin and blood. It poured out of him rapidly. His breathing slowed. His eyes drooped slowly shut. Every sensation that was screaming lulled slow as an adagio until it receded at last to a deafening silence. His body slunk down into the blood pooled across the floor, limp, without a trace of suffering left.

The notebook was stained with a few streaks of blood, but each word remained perfectly legible. On the last page, in an untidy scrawl, lay Ryan’s last testament. This is what it said:

I have known, since I first could feel, that life is agony. I have known all the privilege I possess never having worked a day in my life and, though orphaned, with enough money to do little else but create. I sat above the rest and turned my nose up at them and I justified it with my art and the heart that it came from. Still, all the creation I ever did was only to distract myself from the agony of life, it was transcendent at times and I really gave it everything I had but nothing, absolutely nothing, made me love life more than Zehra. Each day I awoke to her face filled me with more joy than any sunset I knelt before, more joy than any of the times when I wrote as though the divine was singing through me. Each night that I fell asleep with her in my arms was the truest peace I’ve known, and every moment without her was insufferable for it. Still, I bore that because I had to write to keep my mind right. She never understood that. I barely understood it either. But it matters little any more because it’s all come to ruin.

I have nothing now but revulsion for everything that dances and dies under the sun and the moon of this cursed existence. I can manufacture no more belief to keep myself going. I can deceive and distract myself with the lie of love no longer. Zehra, you are all of beauty in a single being. That is your divinity and your curse to bear. It takes a lifetime to understand that the other face of beauty is cruelty. Though I knew it, I could not help but chase it. Helpless beneath its spell, I was and will remain mad for you, my love. You were the comet I needed to keep on, my ruby, my nuclear purpose. I seek no forgiveness for what I’ve done to you, I only wish for you to know that my love was more real than any. It is the nature of true love to be truly insane. I was born to feel fully, so I was born to continually burst for all that was worthy. It was you, only you, Zehra.

I am tired of this world. It only sinks its claws deeper into the conspiracy against love. I want no part of this. I think, there is only one fate for the true lover in this place, the same fate as Werther’s, the same doom that awaits all the mad dreamers. So, I accept my fate now and refuse to watch it come slowly. This is the last of my words, my words that vivified nothing nowhere, my words that were only figures on a page for everyone but me. Do not feel sorry for this, do not mourn, go about your selfish lives and keep wanting your ceaseless wants without a care for anything but you. At last, I am free from it. At last, I can say that I once was so alive with nothing but gratitude, for I never have to be again. At last, my wish has come true.

At the front of the notebook, written in far tidier writing-

To Zehra,

with all I have

which was not enough.