neisha

might as well start with this! written a while ago, but me first writing in a while.
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Neisha

Evening winter sunshine on glass. Glass. And shards of memory invade the quiet smoke under the trees. Like the time she wore the jasmine garland around her neck. I should have kissed her then, ignoring the weekend throng on MG Road. Maybe if I did things would have been different. Shards and bits of stained glass maybes. The stained glass window we made of thermocol and bits of plastic, reflecting our earnest satisfied faces in its afterglow. It was always Christmas and never winter. How love grows and changes! Sometimes fresh and green and breathless like a pine sapling, or warm and mellow like the sunset we watched on Om beach, with the sea lapping at our toes and the crabs scuttling first this way then that, scurrying about like hassled managers in the long call-centre night. It has been stormy, bringing rain and lightning; it has been hot and dry and parched. Someday, I hope, it will stand like the old hotel in Wellington, rock solid and covered in ivy, and people will look at us and feel beautiful.

We make strange traveling companions, she with her poetic name and uncertain ancestry, I with my poetic pretensions and uncertain efficacy. I lost our way in the woods in Kotagiri, and was happy enough to find another way around. She was upset that I’d lost the way. That was a strange trip. This whole thing, now that I think of it, has been a strange trip. The telephone is supposed to bridge distances, to bring people closer. I am sorely afraid it has driven us apart, keeping me from crossing the seas in my desire to be with my love. It is too easy to make a call, to send a text message. A poor substitute, true, but enough of a substitute to keep me sane. Even a cursory reading of Shakespeare must show that sanity makes for poor romance. But holidays do make for better love-making-talking, and we happily have our share of those. Strange, and mostly happy.

And now we are at a crossroads. She always wanted me to write a song for her. A little jealous of all the other female titles in my songs. I am rather superstitious about that-I really want to stay in this relationship. I tell her that she is my song. She refuses to believe me, but Lord knows she is.

Change, they tell me, is a good thing. I don’t know about that. But I do know we have changed. For better or worse I could not tell you. She has been out there, winning wars and saving lives, while I sit here at home and till the earth. Not that I have much to show for it. What I have gained is an incredible itch in the seat of my pants to ride, ride, and ride a little more. Does a membership in a motorcycle club indicate a portent towards settling down? No? How about a motorcycle club that does more e-mail sending than actual riding? Wouldn’t that qualify? Evening winter sunshine and online agony aunts would still say no. I could convince the sunshine to shine on a chromed silencer pipe instead. But she probably has more access to the online aunties.