Random Experiences - 2022

Of Friendship and Love

It's how she makes me into a sculptor, and a painter in my mind. It's her face, this beautiful face, I woke up to today. I sit in my buddha position, getting prepared for some thinking time and midnight meditation, and I see her face.

She's wrapped up nice and warm under her white blanket. Her body outline reminds me of a siren mermaid posing for a painting. All I see of this siren though is her face.

She hugs her pillow and forms an inverted S. She wears a cream-coloured handknit beret that looks like pink under the soft green neon light. She says the light is her sleep bulb.

This beret, it's drawn back a little so I see the frontal roots of her braids. I bend my upper torso towards her face and stare intensely at her braids, the roots actually. After some seconds, I catch myself holding my breath and fall back into my meditation pose.

I want to massage her scalp. I love to massage her scalp but there's hardly time for that in the day, and I like to let her sleep at night. She is sensitive to the slightest of my touches and she has a busy day. My days are for lounging.

But it's her face that draws me in. I look at her nose and they have a different shine. And this nose, her nose, sticks out of her face like the perfectly shaped pon-pon of Pikachu. Small, round, and cute.

I want to touch the tip lightly, but what is this beauty that sleeps? Best be left as is.

Like the full moon on a dark cloud, her nose reflects the neon light and softly contrasts her chocolate-coloured skin.

She shakes a little and wakes up. She sees me staring at her and asks why I'm awake. It's barely morning and I slept pretty late. I want to tell her I missed her and I'm burning her face into my memory because of how long it might take before I see her again. Instead, I tell her I want to do some thinking.

She goes to pee and I watch her walk lithely like a pampered cat who aims to walk on air someday. She wears a white tubed crop top and denim bum shorts. As she climbs back into bed, I want to lie down beside her and hug her till she sleeps again. But I stay in my position and just smile at her.

She opens her eyes briefly, sees me smiling, rolls her eyes playfully, and faces away from me. Beside our bed is a mirror so I see her face, this face that makes me into a sculptor and a painter in my dream world.

Before she turned, I glimpsed her lips. Those dark and beautiful gates of bliss, gates my wandering tongue has passed through severally, and will yet pass through if fate permits.

I watched those lips for fleeting seconds and remembered when we started as friends, and how she began to grow conscious of her looks when she was around me.

She'd complain and say how her lips were too dark and she doesn't feel okay with it because people talk and people stare. In those moments, I wished she could, for a second, look at her lips through my lenses and see the elegance of the loamy soil replicated in her small and cute lips.

I longed for days when my kisses would tell the stories and express the desires that words were short of telling. Several times, I told her how beautiful those lips, her dark lips, are. And when we finally kissed, I hoped she read the million and one expressions that language couldn't capture.

I look in the mirror and see her face. They pull me in tonight. I want to hold her pretty face with beautiful sprinkles of premenstrual acnes and just feel its softness in my hands.

She has turned back to face me. She sleeps peacefully.

On nights like this, I want to tell her I missed her and will miss her still after I'm gone. I want to tell her I love her and will love her still after I'm gone. I want to hold her in my arms and feel the warmth of her skin penetrate my cold chest, while she does that thing of melting into my embrace.

On nights like this, I watch her sleep and I smile, knowing that it was worth giving friendship and love a chance.