Writing

Lily Malsawmsang

Oct 17, 2020

THE MOON WAITED FOR THE SUN

On some nights you are setting alarms on your phone for the next day. On others, you’re going through chats of old conversations you had with people who meant so much to you. And you wonder what went wrong; you smile at some inboxes and zoom into some of the photos you shared.

And you wonder if it was your fault or theirs that you no longer have those conversations, you delete some of the messages you sent them, you end up deleting all of them, you realize that they actually never texted you but only replied to your texts.

You click on their profile picture and after it loads you realize that it’s been 8 months, 10 months or a year and a half but, no – and they still smile in all their photos while you don’t even have a profile picture and your WhatsApp status is a dot.

You close your phones screen. You close your eyelids. You engulf your face in your palms full of tears and call it a day.

This short story is inspired by the people who change that routine in our lives, the people who never call us daily, the people who don’t always text us frequently but we have them pinned at the top of our chats because when we receive their texts, we want it to be the first thing that we pay attention to.

Because they pay attention to us too, despite its across the glass walls of insecurities that we’ve built so high around ourselves. The only people who can face through these glass molecules and hug us so tight every time they see us wilt from self-resistance. The resistance of ourselves from who we could be.

******

TABLE OF CONTENTS

· We already made memories

· It’s either love or it sure feels like it.

· Chaos makes the muse

· The eclipse.

******

We already made memories

Nadine

Sitting in her low lit room, pen in her hand, staring at the blank page of her notebook. She has no idea how to start writing this. This isn’t one of those essays about politics or feminism she so gladly writes after long nights of research. She wants to write. She’s been wanting to write. But she has no idea how to form feelings in words.

Her phone rings rattling her.

“Hey Celeste,” She picks up.

“Hey. My guy just gave me tickets to the best club party. You have to come along. You stood me up last time remember?” Celeste said not taking a moment to breath.

“Well I can’t now either. I have an assignment to submit tomorrow. But I’ll make it up to you another time,” she says skeptical that her friend would understand.

” It’s okay. Next time you’re not giving me any excuse,” Celeste sounded disappointed. She hangs up the phone. She was comfortable right here. Figuring out what she wanted to write because she didn’t have a clue yet.

The knock at her door was a welcome distraction.

Jack

He entered and he could swear her face lit up; for a moment he stared at her. At her face. At her eyes. They weren’t just brown eyes; they were her brown eyes. And they were beautiful.

He had created a habit of peeping inside the double decker, on her bed. It became part of his sub conscious habits, and walking in on her lying on the bed had become his favorite spot.

Nadine sat on her bed, still in her night sleeping dress, holding a pencil and a booklet of light green sticky notes.

‘Hi.’

Nadine: Hey. It’s nice to see you what’s up?

He could hear her excitement. He knew she liked her own company but even he knew it got lonely sometimes. But she always seemed to know what she wanted; he guessed that’s the price to pay. He didn’t like bargaining anyway.

Jack: Had a meeting thought I’d come say hi before I go home.

Nadine: Right now? It’s pretty late

Jack: It’s not so late. I’ll be home in an hour or two.

Yap. Their conversations always started out being awkward but somehow they ended up laughing and wishing it wouldn’t end.

He brought poetry into her life and adventure, Lots of adventure. She brought real moments and genuine beauty to his. She told him things she didn’t have to and he brought her along on trips he didn’t have to. Like them multi-vitamins, he nourished her days with articles that found his way to her aura. In a world full of selfish people, she needed a friend but he was like a package on offer with so much more to give away to the lucky subscriber.

Nadine had not only subscribed to his blog, but also to the impromptu visits that he made to her room. Like them painkillers, her hostel was like the chemist at the corner in his hood and she owned a room which had been the only shelf in the chemist with her, the full package that revived his nerves and snapped him back to his senses.

They had fun. They had pictures. They had memories. They had food. Oh lots of food. A kind of friendship more tragic than love. They talked a lot and said remarkably interesting things about music and books and films and politics.

And life

And the times he found her sad because everything was not okay and the time she worried about him when he wasn’t feeling well. Jack was like an open book, but yet a blank one to those readers who don’t understand the language of the omens. Jack found it interesting how she could not only read in between the lines of his personality coding, but also interpret the lines into information that even he hadn’t paid so much attention to.

And the time they sat in a bus her head on his shoulder and he noticed how the sun kissed half her face. He had never seen her face with her eyes closed before… the landscape of her face resembled a calm dam, with the pencil enhanced eyebrows vegetatively retreating her slopping face above her eyes, to the rest of her head. Her eyelashes were like papyrus, a growth that fenced her medium-wide white eyeballs with which he assumed to be two clear ponds which reflected him every time he stared at them. To him, her face was a whole adventure which anyone would take for a whole day.

And the time he wore a purple suit and she could have sworn she’s never seen a purple suit but she’d never seen anyone else look so damn good in one.

And the times they had questions in their minds but never asked as if they were tales that weren’t meant to be told. So they always wondered:

Is his favorite color purple?

Does she always tell the truth?

Did someone take a portion of his heart?

Is her skin as tan as I imagine?

Does he wear glasses to avoid seeing anyone?

Is she seeing anyone?

And the things they were certain about but never said them either:

She has an intelligent mind.

He will make a difference in the world.

I’ll keep her in my life.

He has a place in my heart.

It’s either love or it sure feels like it.

On a Saturday, 1845hrs.

It could have happened a lot of ways but this was how it happened. This is the path it took. This was how it was meant to happen. And this was perfect. On a noisy crowded bus. In a few innocent moments. In a few words.

Jack

How could she! How could she sit there and close her eyes and look so beautiful! Was she sleeping away the tiresomeness of the day’s eventualities? It would be the perfect moment for someone to kiss her. It was hard to define his feelings for her. He loves her lips, and the rest of her face too. They were succulent, wet on the surface – a resemblance you’d picture in your mind if you are fond of apples after rainfall. Shit! He had screwed up; he had fallen for her!

And his heart? His chest couldn’t contain it. Like it didn’t belong to him anymore. It belonged to her and if she wanted it, oh if she wanted it, he’d wish for nothing in exchange. Nothing just to know she loved him, too. He’d give it away like a gift. He’d gift it to her like a king gifts his fortune to his eldest son, knowing that he’s investing in the next kingdom, the next reign, his next existence.

He was willing to merge his heart with hers, to make one a whole hypothesis proven by their chemistry.

Just her heart in exchange for his.

Nadine

Looking around the bus, she set her eyes on him. She signaled him a sit next to her, but he had to go talking to people on his way to her row before he sat next to her. She didn’t mind because her reasons were silly. She just wanted to tell him something she’d realized about her life. That this was her life, she was both happy and sad and still trying to figure out how that could be. She knew him of all people would understand because he’d appreciate what it means. At least she hoped he would, because she looked up to him for strength and friendship and to her that was much to get.

He sat beside her. She was saying something but he watched her lips curve the word into shapes that hacked his mind.

He knew that he was about to leak.

Jack: Do you know how much I want to kiss you? Do you know for how long I’ve wanted to kiss you?

She blinked a few times, looked outside as if she was confirming if the environment had changed, and pulled her gaze up to his eyes.

Jack: Do you know how much I love you?

Nadine: I love you too.

Jack: You always think it’s a joke.

Nadine: I’m serious too.

Jack: No you’re not.

Jack took in a deep breath, rolled down in his seat and inclined his back at an angle of about 30 degrees on the backrest of the seat. His head staring at the luggage compartment of the bus above him, he pressed his eyelids together with pain and did the same to his lips with anxiety.

He felt like she was still looking at him in shock and its during such moments he wished that God would have done him the honors of favor by at least poking a pair of dimples into his cheeks, they’d do him some good at the moment.

“Can I kiss you?”

Nadine: We’re in a bus full of people.

Jack: No one is looking. It’s dark and it’s perfect.

Nadine: Are you sure you’re okay? You didn’t drink something?

He sat up in the chair and opened his eyes; slowly, the realization of what he’d done …no, what he’d said had dawned on him.

Jack: Oh my God. What did I just do?

Confusion swept over her face. Thoughts racing. Heart beating. As if he could see it, he said;

Jack: I’m serious. I want to taste your lip-gloss, at least.

Nadine: Wait, you can hear what you’re saying right?

Jack: I knew you won’t kiss me. You don’t love me.

Jack turned his body a 90 degrees towards her, she was inclining on his seat, and what his eyes saw, his mouth confessed;

“Sitting here I can see your cleavage. It’s tempting.”

There they were!

A few buttons below her voice box, there laid her two tits. They were calm, as calm as calm can be. They looked like two fawn gazelles, grazing side by side. The gallery that their skin displayed installed a serenity in his mind, a view that he’d read and pictured to be the streets of Rue De Berne in one of his favorite author’s work: Eleven Minutes.

A painter’s art captured from Copacabana – facing The Swiss Alps.

She looked at him and she knew that she was going to make a decision that would change if not something, everything.

Like a strike, she held his face in her palm and pulled him in for a kiss.

Like an impulse, he pulled away the very minute her lips touched his.

Like her skin was lava and she’d just spilled it on his!

The shock on his face. The surprise in his voice. The disbelief in his eyes

Damn. Was she that unpredictable?

Nadine.

She got to her room and striped off her clothes took a long deserved shower and laid on her bed. She needed rest. Few days of traveling had worn her down. Her mind though. Her mind managed to keep her up. So what happened on the bus was unexpected. So many things were left unsaid. Unexplained Uncertain. She horribly wished such things would be straight forward. Like sending a reckless text because how reckless can a form digitized communication be? And you never know, one day a bus may hit them.

She wanted it to be easy to tell people she loved them and they were amazing humans and she couldn’t believe they existed. To say kiss me harder and you brighten my day. To live life as straight forward as possible.

Because you never know when the bus is coming

Jack.

Later that night long after they had parted, Jack arrived home tired and worn out. He grabbed a pack of crisps and juice for supper and walked into the shower.

Jack closed his eyes, wilted his head to the front by the neck and held the tiles on the bathroom wall in front of him with his right hand. He adjusted the knob on the wall with his left hand to turn the shower on. As the water hit his axial vertebrae and down his spine, the feeling gave him a relaxing effect that made the thoughts on his mind crawl into the night.

He sighed deeply, adjusting the temperatures of the shower – he needed something hot on his body, at least as leverage for the hot memories that were roaming his mind at that moment. They were as hot as she was, and they pressed his mind like a hot spring.

Like a vent.

He has a passion for hot showers, or so did the situation always convince his mind. But that particular evening the mind he trusted was encoding different signals.

Passion sends us signals that guide us through our lives; gives us new hopes for a definite expectation, and it’s up to us to interpret those signs.

He reached out for the body shower gel, pressed some into his palm and slowly applied it on his body – starting from his chest, gently on his nipples and down to his ribcage. He leaned on the wall, lifted his left leg and smeared his genitals with the gel. His body temperature was already raised, and the cream gave him a satisfying, detoxifying and cooling effect.

‘Man’s need a shave’

He mumbled as he scrubbed his whole body and covered it in the gel. Jack stepped into the shower stream and increased the water pressure as he breathed into the humid bathroom, watching his breath disappear into the steam from the shower cap.

He loved his showers that way. He craved anything that was to access every part of his skin to be that way – Hot, and all over him.

Later that night in his diary, jack turned to a new page and wrote;

“I’d like to believe that I’m in Love.”

Chaos makes the muse

They were young and they were human and they were beautiful and they were not as in control as they thought. The earth belonged to the world and the world belonged to a universe. They had read books and watched films that talked about the possibilities of a multi-verse, and they remembered this and realized that they were not the ones who called the shots to what had just happened to them. They realized that they don’t make the rules and the earth isn’t aware of the rules neither. They realized that the world has a skin and it should be green but the universe has a soul and it’s dark.

Probably darker than his skin, or her thoughts

They became aware of the soul of the universe and craved for a connection.

A connection which they could only log in if they accepted that chaos makes the muse and the language of the omens which communicates to the soul of the universe was the only linguistic to allude to.

They were ready to dissolve their form, and become new. New to each other, new to the world and its inhabitants. They trusted the universe, because in their minds, it was the only muse. The only source of inspiration of what they each desired – each other.

Nadine

He told her he loved her first and she told him she loved him; and even though she wasn’t sure she did, it seemed like common courtesy to say it back. And maybe that was wrong of her but slowly she realized she did love him.

She loved him. She loved the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he laughed. The way his smile would bring a warmth to her chest which reminded her of a lazy summer afternoon.

The way he made her feels strong and beautiful even when she didn’t believe it herself. She’d fallen in love a little more each day and now it felt like words couldn’t express what she felt for him. It was scary. It was weird. It seemed impossible to just be- to just let people know you want the, need them, feel like, in this very moment you will break down if you don’t see them, hold them in some way whether it’s your hand on their shoulder, your tongue in their mouth or your heart on their hands.

Jack.

Why would he be so intoxicated so abruptly? Silence is the best weapon so they say. He didn’t believe in systems that he didn’t witness their installation or those that he wasn’t or couldn’t trace their coding. He had broken that simple rule of silence, and now he had let the cat out of the bag and he had lost the bag.

It had been a tough day of focusing in between CATs and lessons and it had dawned on him at the wrong coast. He was used to sand and clear horizons but this particular day, he woke up on a clayish shore trapped in mangrove roots. She had been on his mind the whole day, like a bastard who’s on hard drugs and that was his only muse.

About three days since the incidence on the bus, and she had already kissed his lips in a nutshell of a moment, and he had already explored the anatomy of her fawn gazelles and he had already bitten her lip. And today he was convinced that he wanted to see her again because he missed her as hell.

Jack picked his phone and opened his dial pad. He dialed her. He wanted to tell her that he had encountered a rough day and that he missed her so much. The phone connected

“Hey, what’s up?”

Jack: Hi.

Nadine: Hi Jack.

Nadine: I missed you Jack. What’ve you been up to?

Jack: Nothing much sweetheart. Normal academic routine, then now… I’m up to missing you now.

Nadine: Where are you?

Jack: In my room.

Nadine: I’ll find you in a few.

A few minutes later, Nadine showed up in his room. Jack was lying on his bed, still in his boots. He snapped when he heard a knock on the door and let her in. He pulled a chair from a table and insinuated her to sit on it. He maintained his position on the bed, and realized that she was in her pajamas…

Jack: What are the odds that you don’t have a bra inside that hoodie?

Nadine: We shouldn’t bet on that.

Jack: What is the probability, then?

Nadine: Do your maths, consider the time of the day.

Jack: My final answer would be 1.

Nadine: Your mathematics never disappoints.

Jack: What would you consider a disappointment in a relationship?

Nadine: If it loses its purpose. That would be a disappointment.

Jack: What would you consider a disappointment from a person you’re looking up to as a boyfriend?

Nadine: Jack, last time remember I asked you what you expect from me?

Jack: Yes, you did. And I promised to give you an answer after a week. After 7 days. I still have 43 hours remaining for me to get back to you with an informed feedback.

Nadine: Jack. Most people always want to know what the other person expects from them-including me then, and not what they’re willing to give or bring to the table. Jack I want to tell you what I am willing to give to you, to us.

Jack cleared his throat, but realized that he had no content in his voice box. He realized that all this time he had been staring at her face. He reflexed and took her right palm into his hands, and started feeling the texture of her fingers as he admired her fingernails.

He didn’t respond. He couldn’t respond.

Nadine: I want to give you time and adventure and fun. And me. All of me

Jack: What about your parents? Are you denying them custody ma’am?

She smiled, made eyes that Jack had realized that she always made at him when he had swept her off her feet, and then bit her lower lip.

Jack: I want all of you, including your weight.

Nadine: I weigh more than you, you’ll be toppled. I’m 68 Kgs!

Jack: I’m 79 Kgs sweetheart.

This was an awkward moment for her, for both of them.

One, because she was a kilogram less to awkwardness

And two, she weighed her options too high and he dived above them from the top. Nadine was more physically endowed than jack – who seemed to be more compressed and occupied less atmospheric space. Jack was more vertically distributed than her, but she took advantage of the horizontal distribution of their bodies and beat him at it.

He loved their bodies’ scale factors just as they posed, although it’s a condition that he was open minded to and didn’t mind any changes with time. He had seen her eat, and she had convinced him about the consumption of food. They had however researched and found a name for the situation and it turned out that apparently it was a psychological disorder that existed.

Jack: I want kids. I want a family with you.

Nadine: I feel like you’re already family.

Jack: For years I have felt like I didn’t have family, until those words, Thank you.

Jack: I want to make money with you. I want us to achieve your goals and mine as ours. I want to pay attention to us.

“You know, I have never known how it feels to have parents who have money and can afford anything that I needed or need now. I may have not had that feeling, but I know my kids will have it. I want it so bad that I work hard now so that they can get to experience that feeling”

Nadine took in a deep breath, and held his palm tighter.

“The problem is, I don’t know how it feels and so I don’t think I will be able to know how to exactly make my kids explore that feeling responsibly.”

Jack paused. He took a gallon of water and did himself the honors of a glass. He poured it into his throat and touched her thigh. Her left thigh.

“I know we are from different backgrounds and families. Forgive me for being so sharp with my words but you and I have been raised differently, and our parents have had to deal with different responsibilities while raising us. I strongly believe that you’ve garnered just enough of the experience that I need in order to give my kids the feeling I am talking about.”

Nadine: Are you asking for my professional help?

Jack: No and Yes. No because I am not asking for your professional help, you are not a professional. I am asking for your Motherly help. I need you to help me raise my kids in that line, as their mother. I am asking you to consider marrying me one day, in the near future.

Nadine: I like that plan. I like it a lot. And if I do become your wife then I’d love to raise kids with you- in that line and more.

Jack: I always paid an extra coin in church so that I can meet a girl like you Nadine. God has remembered my actions, and I will rejoice.

Time had elapsed and jack figured out that he should let her go to rest. He stood up and helped her on her feet with his right hand in her left.

He walked towards the door to open it but she didn’t move, holding him from reaching the door because they were still holding hands. She took a huge step and bumped into him, as if she didn’t think through it. Jack found it beautiful, and subconscious of her. He held her waist with his left arm and pulled her closer to his body.

Their eyes locked.

Nadine moved her head close to jacks, and sprinted to level up with his height. From where Jack was standing, her eyes were now deeper and dim. He could feel the smell of her breath from her nose – an overworking air conditioner. That is when Jack knew that she was anxious, she was anticipating for something that Jack had to do now, or she’d jump on him and take it from him!

He let go her hand and held her chin with the right hand. He pulled her head up and brought her face to the proximity of his lips. Slowly, Jack separated his lips and pressed her lower lip in between them.

She breathed in deeply, through her nose. Her eyelids retreated instantly and pressed on one another. Jack released her lower lip and sandwiched her upper lip in between his now wet lips. He then picked her both lips together, and tilted her head to kiss her gullet. She withered in his arms and pressed her fawn gazelles on his chest. Jack released her neck’s skin from his lips and exhaled a breath he’d been holding all this while on her right ear. She produced a vulnerable sound, and Jack liked it.

Jack stroke her hair from her shoulder and it landed on the rift of her back. He dipped his tongue into the bowl between her neck bone and her shoulder muscles, then inhaled a single sniff simultaneously running his nose from the edge of her right shoulder up to her right ear. He circumnavigated east from the ear to her face, and stared at her for a couple of seconds.

Jack rubbed his right thumb on her left cheek just below her left eye, tightly pressed his lips on her forehead and released them in a slow motion.

She collapsed in him, and he hugged her like a floating log he had just grabbed drowning his way down a river’s rapids. She made her way to the door, and left Jack standing still in the same spot.

Nadine: Do you mind opening the door for me?

Jack: Sure, ma’am. Why not?

Jack smiled.

Jack: I will do it because there is a superstition from where I come from that says; first time visitors at your place should not open the door on their way out when they are leaving. If you don’t open the door for them and let them do so by themselves, tradition and culture has it that they will not come back into that place again after they have left.

Nadine: I want to come back.

Later that night after Nadine arrived in her room, she remembered something. She picked up her cellphone and dialed Jack.

Nadine: Jack, I’m in my room now.

Jack: Okay. Thank you for today.

Nadine: Anytime sweetie. Thanks. Speaking of which, tomorrow is your birthday Jack. Jack: Oh, yes! It had slipped my mind for a minute there…

Nadine: What do you want for a gift? All you have to do is ask. Happy birthday in advance Babe.

Jack: I will give it a thought, and get back to you. Thank you in advance. They said goodnight to each other and Nadine lay on her bed and replayed the night’s events in her mind.

She knew he was truly happy when his mother has kissed his forehead at 19 and that his toothbrush was blue. And that he made sure to button his shirts perfectly but couldn’t choose a favorite color. That he didn’t curl into himself when he slept and that his eyes were the color of the clouds before it rained when he was angry. And that a year ago was the last time he ate ice cream. She knew a hundred little things about Jack but when he kissed her those few moments, she couldn’t even remember her own name and a dark curl of desire begun to twist inside of her. Bending her rules. Snapping her last bit of restraint. Jack thought of how close he had become to her on this new lane, and he knew that everything had changed now from what he had subscribed to henceforth.

One of his intentions was to make her happy, truly happy. That night, he thought of a gift that he could get her as a sign of what she had become in his life and to symbolize his intentions with her life, and he made up his mind on something. He picked his phone, and before he went to bed he texted her;

You’re the best gift that the universe has given to me, and gifts are meant to be kept safe. I am going to keep you safe, and your feelings are safe with me. I am therefore promising you a gift. I will buy you a memory glass jar with a lid…so that every day, you will note down the happiest moments that you will have encountered during that day, and drop the notes in the jar.

And one day, when the jar will be full and you will be empty and broken and you will want to give up, you will open that jar and read all the notes in it. I hope they give you a reason to smile and change your mind when the day comes. Goodnight.”

The Eclipse

Nadine

The first thing she saw when she woke up was the text from Jack. It made her not only love him more, but she desired him from that minute, all the way into perpetuity. When desire is still in such a pure state, the man and the woman fall in love with life, they live each moment reverently; consciously, always ready to celebrate the next blessing. To Jack and Nadine, they were looking forward to blessings in form of memories and partnerships and romance and politics and life. When people feel like this, they are not in a hurry; they do not precipitate events with unthinking actions. They know that the inevitable will happen, that they will change and pray it wouldn’t scare the other person. That they will grow without growing apart. That, that which is real will find a way of revealing itself.

When the moment comes, they do not hesitate, they do not slip a single magical moment, because they respect the importance of each second. He had waited for her and that morning before she removed her night dress and headed into the shower, she grabbed her pencil and light green sticky notes and wrote; two different cultures, two different backgrounds. She was a star but he was just but a tiny planetoid.

The sun and the moon

And with the help of the soul of the universe whose language – the omens, that no one else understood apart from them, they chose to wait on the secret promises of their own souls which belonged to the world. They waited for the right time, and even the world was ready for it.

My name is Nadine, and I feel like that moment in time is here with us. That moment is now… Because this morning my heart and my tissues can feel a beautiful alignment of how I feel about Jack…and I know this is how he has been feeling about me all this while, and he chose to wait. This is it,

…………. this is the Eclipse.”

THE END OF THE BEGINNING.