Maybe One Day

2

From day one she always had me wrapped around her finger. All she had to do was say the words and I would be there. We met in a coffee shop on the outskirts of London, I was just walking in when I saw her sitting outside smoking and writing in this little notebook she carried everywhere. I ended up not getting coffee, I just sat at her table, introduced myself and just watched her exsist. 

She was always skinny, but she never seemed to eat much and was always smoking. On this particular day she was wearing a pair of black skinny jeans, a red flannel shirt and a black bomber jacket, matching her black hair with that cute little side fringe she'd had since she was 7. She had talked to me when I sat down but not for long. She said her name was Rain and she lived in the old flats across the road. She was a bartender at nights because she said she liked the night time and sometimes men would buy her drinks and give her free cigarettes. She was writing one of her many descriptive narratives and she also told me how fed up she was. I could listen to her talk for hours, and frequently had too after this point. She only ever smiled with half her face, and it never quite reached her eyes. Despite her string and confident disposition, I liked to say that I knew from the start that she was vulnerable. She put up a strong guard though. I stayed there for an hour, before collecting her number and leaving for my job. I was working as an apprentice to the counsellor. I was really into politics then. 

She called me a few days later, asking if I was free. She needed me to help her sneak out of work because she claimed that one of the men was looking at her like she was a piece of meat and plus she needed a smoke. I drove to her bar at 11pm, and by 11:18 we were gone. On this night like many other nights we spent smoking on my car rooftop and looking out at the stars, watching our bleak reality disappear under thick clouds of smoke. It was only at night that I could see her at her rawest, it was in all of those nights that she told me of her desire to leave this morbid planet. She told me she was into writing and death and I told her I was into politics. She had laughed at that, and pulled her fringe across her eyes. 

"Politics? Well then, you'd better change the world."

I tried to Rain, I'm still trying.