Vacancy

II Vacancy II

Hopefully, I never knew if the feeling I have been seeking for a long time actually existed. The coffee beans in the machines crushed, tempted, warm- or when the dusky sunlight peeped onto me begging for a caress- or it might be back then when all uncertainty evaporated in the musky monsoon sky. Like the butterflies feel the urge to sit on a flower and take a full sip of honey, or the boats that begin their journey with nothing in mind and to the known destination with unknown happiness, I felt the urge to feel a kiss. Kiss shouldn't be associated with erotic senses all the time! And why if I want a kiss on my lips or on my cheeks or on my eyelids or on my hand would make me someone shameless? As always, I had a hunger for love, for truth, for flowers, for the sky, and for... a kiss. One step, two... and half okay three, the pitter-patter of heart and drizzles, sky organizing his drafts and I am in need of a kiss. A kiss so azure.

A lad sat beside me. Though he seemed to be younger in age, he looked as frustrated with life and days as a man in his mid-forties. The leather sack in his hand dumped onto the pavement as his back leaned onto the bench. His worn-out black coat and the shirt's upper few buttons unbuttoned, the crooked blue and white striped tie, his hair slightly messy- everything was highly contrasting with me- wearing a black Louis Vuitton turtleneck, brown Gucci trousers,  a tight ponytail with polka dot red silk ribbon, and white house slippers and the little yellow sling bag I got on my twelfth birthday. . Like a puppy curiously looking at the Christmas decorations, I too looked at him. For some unknown reason, this person beside me who is super tired after all day work perked my interest. Thanks to his all-day work, the buttery skin hid underneath the tiredness, the eyebags seemed to shadow the doe eyes.

"You look tired"- I said to air but basically to him. He seemed weird like me. Because he answered.

Despite our external appearance, we never know what's going on in the other person's lives, some may get rejected in their most awaited interview, some succeed to wake up in the morning with their lowest graph of depression, and some felt happier when their mother sent them their favorite t-shirt via mail. Or there could be people like me who kept overwhelmed by their luxury and tried to run away from life without telling anyone or someone working day and night to feed themselves something more than just rice for lunch.

"I am" Oh his voice is sweet! Unlike me who has a deeper voice than the grumpy clouds despite being a female human. 

"Are you coming back from work?" I asked again drawing imaginary circles with my feet on the pavement.

He hummed. Neither he nor I felt like strangers. Like other people he talked with me yet, there was this similarity in both of us. We had a vacancy in our souls, and of what that we don't know.

"You don't have anything to ask me?" I asked with the drawing intact.

"Why are you in slippers? because judging by your clothes you don't seem like a person to run out of shoes. He asked, this time with comparingly longer sentences, probably because he was recharging by rest as time passed by.

"Because I never felt an urge to buy them. Outdoor shoes are hazardous. They tag you to think they are meant for outside. I wanted the indoor shoes to have a new perspective." As I said those, it would be a lie if I say I wasn't nervous. Because whenever I say my words to people the usual answer is- you are weird.

"That is really nice though. I wish I could think like you." He sighed. Should I pat his shoulders?

"You must have had it hard. Don't worry, things will be easier, after all, everything is temporary. So as sadness." I said with a smile but worry in my eyes.

"Exactly. Everything is temporary what if I don't get enough time." This time he looked up and stared straight into my eyes. His eyes weren't azure.

"Seeing from your glass, it seems like you live yesterday and love tomorrow but forget today in all these. How about this time take a chance to present today? Don't you have any memory of when lived the present moment?"

But I can't help to be anxious. His eyes seemed desperate. The stars couldn't form in the delve of the ocean in his eyes. I envy such...

Maybe this isn't the time we should meet, maybe I feel like a blind archer with no ears for music.

"If you turn left from the end side of this road, you will find a statue of a little girl. Turn right and take a few steps and you will be greeted with a large red hoarding of "Blues" a daytime flower house and an evening jazz club and a nighty night book club. I used to visit there when I was ten with my grandfather, he had a friend there, and now that he left us, and I am a working youth, everything turned pale as if that was dream non-existence in the crucial reality." He said in one breath. The stars in his eyes slowly started to form. "So..."

"So?" I hummed, with a hand on my cheek.

"So, Miss stranger, would you like to go there with me to visit a reality that is a lucid dream in our daily living nightmares?" He gave me his hand, the tips of the fingers a little blistery from office work, unlike me with my French manicured nails.

I was about to take his hand when my driver and servants of our house called my name. They found me again. Mr. Strangers' hold was instantly stiff on my hand as if it was a shock of electricity that transferred. With my jittery eyes, I brushed his rough hands silently sending my longing questionnaire of that dream.

"I have to go."

"Will we meet again, Miss?"

"I would love to meet you again, and go to that place next time."

"And how may?"

"Every day after work sit here to take a rest a bit, enjoy the weather, I too would visit you like a flying feather."

And his desperate eyes bombarded with stars I had been dying to see,

"Okay. Umm, may I kiss your cheek?"

"I wish!"

And he kissed my left cheek on the corner of my lips, as if in an attempt to fulfill the vacancy I had. That was then I realized to live the time to fill the vacancy of heart, he needed hope and I needed a...wish.

Little did I know thestars were I in his eyes, that I had been dying to see, just... a reflection of Love.

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