Red dust waves in and out of the bus halt like a flag.
In and out. Like a flag.
The people are tired grey silhouettes of themselves. Impatient to be home, under the protective shading of clay tiled roofs. Impatient for the bus to come. Craning their sweaty-sticky necks in bus-glimpsing hope.
The flag waves yet again.
I look down at my feet. Looking away from the sweaty-sticky faces at my dusty-worn-out slippers. At the dying grass by the side of the road. The road itself seems devoid of breath.
When I was little, I used to imagine that there were people who washed the roads. That was before I saw the road washing man one night. After that I knew that roads were washed. We were in our van; me, nangi, amma and thaththa. There was a man in the middle of the road, and he was scrubbing the black tar with a bar of yellow Sunlight soap. I learned then, that people washed roads. Like cars, they needed to be washed. But the interesting fact is nobody ever mentions that because it’s a secret only known to the government.
But there’s nothing conspicuous about this. Me standing in the bus halt. Or the tired grey people standing in the bus halt. Or the weathered man washing roads every night, knowing that tomorrow he will do it all over again. The conspicuousness lies somewhere deep within the grey matter of our minds. The conspicuousness is our spirit. No one sees that in the middle of the day in bus waiting silence.
I’m sliding from the plane of love into the depths of frenzy. From limitless desire into passionless nothing. Standing on tar covered earth, molten and liquefied; my feet are touching the ground. My thoughts have left me, in a battle with the heat.
Come closer. I want to see the blue veins on your neck. That pulse; I know exactly how it jumps at the touch of my fingertips. It’s sorcery in the form of unlawful serenade. Electrocuting your entire being for the sacrifice of love.
Come closer. I haven’t finished yet. Haven’t even started. Come just a little closer for me to try and save myself.
Save myself.
From the ghosts of the deepest wells in me. From the blood of the thickest sin.
Please, come closer. I want you to breathe your light into me.
Minutes later, a bus arrived. The conductor flew off the bus before it even stopped. The silence was shattered like glass breaking.
The flag waved in a fanatic cacophony of red.
“ambalapitiya-‘allawatta-Dehiwala-Galkissa-Katubedda-Moratuwaaa”
The conductors’ throat gushed out the sequence of towns. An old woman who wobbled up to the metal bus stairs was shoved in by the inpatient hands of the god of the bus. He got in after her and the bus regained flight, leaving my shoes dustier and worn out than before. Leaving my brain a little foggier.
I was supposed to get into that bus.
It collapses like walls around me. Collapsing in heavy white sheets; crude backdrops of silence. The heat. Enwalling me in rigid statistics of faranhite.
I want to keep my eyes open. I want to know that I know all that there is to know in my universe. Don’t want to fall asleep, and realize I’ve never even fallen asleep. Don’t want to get drenched by decades of stale rain, in the courtyard of a house I’ve inhabited as a child.
I cannot invoke substance into time. Beget sense, into unwanted love. I cannot separate greed, from touch.
So please keep my eyes opened. Let me drown into the empathic shade of your dreams. Introduce me to the seductions of your monsoon.
I want to separate the greed, from touch.
Red dust waves in and out of the bus halt like a flag.
In and out. Like a flag.
My bag is getting heavier. Someone sneezed behind me. I imagined his spittle racing through empty space at three-hundred-thousand kilometers per second in a destined journey to reach the back of my neck.
Far off in the cluttered black ribbon of Galle Road, a bus was approaching. Tired people shifted from bus waiting into shuffling of getting into the bus. The conductor was strangely quiet, probably subdued by the flag and the red and the tired-sweaty-smells of the universe.
I sat on the corner seat at the back.
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