and she walked

Do you know women who become more and more attractive as they grow older? I do. This post is about one of them. It's about me also. Maybe. Mostly about her though.

12:40pm Lunch break. Everyone's out. Inmates trying to make the most of the 35 minutes on offer before going back to the torture chambers. There's chaos. Noise; both human and machine. The jocks are heading to the basket ball court. The smokers are heading for the road. The nerds are heading to the library. Father's looking, hands on hips, magnifying glass firmly entrenched in his pocket. And then she starts to walk.

Not a blade of grass on the back lawns. Not the leaves on the Ashoka trees. Not the boys playing basketball. Hell, not even the ball. Nothing moved when she walked. When she started from the back and walked all the way out of college. It was like the world stopped to watch her walk. 12:40 pm, every single afternoon. Lunch break was forgotten. Time moved on, we stood still and she walked.

Mr. Kennedy started talking about controlling impure thoughts in Tuesday morning value education classes. I started visiting the graveyard. She still walked out everyday and we all still watched.

Yes. Me too. I watched her walking out. I had a vantage point. Unfortunately I didn't have motivation. My maroon tinted vision just made everything seem pointless and it didn't help that both her brothers were my corex buddies.

Then one day at about 12:45pm maybe, she crossed the road. Came right up to where we were sitting. Regarded us with an icy fucking stare as she lit her navy cut.

“You're dropping me home. Let's go.”

Everything went sort of dark when she told me I was dropping her home. Everything disintegrated into sheer panic when she told me to come in. I fainted when I finally realised she'd been calling me by name.

I remember afternoons spent locked in a tiny room listening to her dreams, to her plans and wondering why I had none. Mornings spent walking through the graveyard talking about death and being morbid. Looking at each other through clouds of grey smoke from morning to dusk and breathing in that sickly sweet stench as if it would make us immortal and then doing the same thing every day for the next six months. She knew it was only a matter of time before everything ended. She knew this entire scene came with an expiry date and sure enough, everything ended. One whole scene. Like 2012 with fewer survivors. It had to.

We stopped our morning walks in the graveyard once the last body was buried, we slowly stopped everything. We said goodbye. I didn't see her for almost a year after that. When I finally saw her again it was like always. She'd talk, I'd nod along, she'd talk some more I'd nod some more and then she'd steal all my cigarettes and send me out for more.

She was a survivor. Still is. All of the skullfucks that life threw her way didn't change her. She walked through it all and thrived quite literally in the face of adversity.

When she left for foreign climes I thought I was finally saying goodbye. Life moved and took me places. I forgot mostly. Then, two years ago I saw her again. Watched for a while. Then watched some more. It took me a while to work up the courage to go say hi. What if she'd forgotten. What is she'd forgotten and would stare at me with that same icy cold look that used to freeze my blood when I was seventeen? Were those 2 little girls her children? I did say hi finally, eventually.

She was the same mostly. When the past was the present she was the only one who knew how shitty it was but now it's all rose tinted glasses and a longing for the good old days which were anything but good. She still talks a lot. Like non fucking stop. She still has her hopes and dreams. She still continues to thrive. In spite of the skullfucks and a life that sees her walking through minefields too often for comfort. Maybe because of it.

The world still stops when she walks. The world still looks. I should be resentful but I'm too busy looking. She thrives in the face of adversity. It doesn't matter how she does it. She thrives and I'm glad she's around.

We'd survived a scene that died. Maybe our corner of ganja park was special, maybe she still had some functioning brain cells, maybe it was something else entirely but I digress. This is still about her and she thrived. She lived, loved, lost and did everything beautiful people do I guess. It was like she took every curve ball life threw at her and somehow came out fitter, better, faster even if not always a winner.

She saved my life once upon a time and is still charging me for it. I wouldn't have it any other way.