Flash Me! has a winner

As promised, here is the winner Flash!

GROWING AWAY
When does it happen? Where? How? Later in life you know that it was this experience, or that year in which you ceased to be a child.

Is that experience always bitter? Or bittersweet. Sad, because childhood is always lost. Not shed like a skin or moult. But lost like an image in a kaleidoscope and all your twisting and turning cannot recall it. Never exactly as it was. So losing childhood is sad, bitter, or bittersweet. What you would call it?

“Hello,” he said, “I’m Aaron.”

“Hello. I’m alone.”

Aaron laughed, “Do you always have opening lines?”

“Not always. I never do anything always. But then I don’t always say never to anything, so perhaps I do.”

“What a complicated person you are.”

“Do you always make snap judgments?”

That’s how we met.

We argued almost constantly, yet we were electrically drawn together. But our moments of peace and clarity were so complete they made up for the arguments. At those times we never said a word. We hardly dared to breathe.

I remember one afternoon when the magic was so strong. The dancing leaves, were greengold. The wind, soft as a zephyr. The sea pounded a primal percussion. The world melted away. Our oneness was yogic in its trance. So intense I snapped it.

“Shall I finish this potato?” the crystal dome of peace shattered into the million sounds of everyday and the world rushed in upon us. His eyes were bewildered and upset. “Why did you do that?”

“Do what”, I challenged, knowing exactly what he meant. I’d wanted to say, “it was too strong, couldn’t you feel it? Too powerful, too much, that kind of emotion is like a razor it will cut our hearts into tiny fragments and scatter them in the wind, into nothingness.” But I pushed the hair out of my eyes, dusted my clothes and prepared to leave.

Some days I ran away from everything and everyone to a place by the sea where the wind whipped angrily, strong and loud in its wailing and lament, high pitched, hysterical. The sea hammered the world into silence, a temple drum demanding the devotees’ total attention.

On those days my confusion would be made to leave like the fisherman who bade his soul depart by cutting at his shadow, so he could live with the mer-folk of the sea who had no souls.

I’d return chastised and silent. For a while we would be without arguments and without spirit. Then we needed other people. Friends, we’d call them in later life. And Aaron was a different creature.

Listen to this:

“No bid.”

“Goodnessknowswhat hearts.”

“Get me a cigarette, please” to me.

“Some water.” Again me. I don’t play, see.

“No bid.”

“Ash tray, two clubs.”

Bridge evenings became more frequent. And I began to see things about Aaron that I distinctly disliked. He was too loud. Too boisterous. Too everything. Maybe he was trying to fill a vacuum. Then I did my nasty thing. I introduced him to Sheila.

She was everything. Attractive. Charming. Nice figure and, I thought, emptyheaded. I could have been wrong about that but I liked to think I wasn’t. Certainly she didn’t feel things as strongly as I did.

Then the green-eyed monster paid me a visit. Before this I had thought myself above green-eyed monsters, sharp, nasty remarks, that sort of thing. But here’s what happened to me:

“Seen Sheila lately?” me.

“Uh hmmm,” Aaron.

“Nice girl isn’t she?”

“I guess.”

“Oh! Confess. You think she’s pretty?” So he agrees. “Yes, she’s pretty.”

Me, nasty, face twisting, a mockery of a smile, eyebrows arched, horrid, vulgar, a disappointment to myself, but I continue, “Prettypretty, pretty nice figure, pretty dumb too!” Dirty laugh.

His face, his heart, his whole being recoils, “Why did you do that?”

I ran away to my place by the sea, began to disengage my mind strings from him. Or was it my heartstrings?

We argued more frequently. The subjects were petty: where to go, what to do. Trivialities. He’d come late to our meeting places. Once he didn’t show up.

He started to flirt with Sheila. The usual double entendre, sexual innuendo, more than one dance. Me? I lost my sense of timing. Couldn’t dance a step. So he danced with her. We needed crowds, by then. And though he always reached me home, his mind was elsewhere, like in those mushy sentimental songs.

Finally I asked him the question. Nothing clever or witty, just straight: “Do you care about me?”

“Do you really mean that? I didn’t know it mattered.”

“It does. I think. Sometimes.” I whispered, not sure myself what I was getting at. And then I backed off. His eyes softened. Deep brown almond eyes he had, has still I suppose, eyes don’t change, do they?

” I do care,” his voice caught deep in his throat, “but you won’t let me. Every time we get close, the same wavelength even, you buck and shy like a wild animal. It’s difficult, but I do care very much, it’s the first, the first…” he broke off.

Things were easy for a while. Calm. Less turbulent. Less colourful. And we needed crowds of friends.

Then I met Zahl. Serene. A well of emotions that he controlled. I felt like a lost ship when it finally sees a familiar coastline.

I was easier with myself, with Aaron. I got my timing back and danced on wings. Then came the tricky part when I had to tell Aaron we were two ships going different ways, the time had come to welcome the freedom of travelling on. Other stars had to be sought, another moon would shine on me. Then, for the first time, he said, “Don’t you care for me?”

“I do, very much.”

What I couldn’t add was that that was why I had to say goodbye, to childhood and to him, with all that that word means: God be with you.

by Zohra Saeed