Friday, November 28, 2008

The Storyteller.

You sit at the newly rusted window every morning, watching the sun lick up the night in flames and write stories for noone to read. You hardly go home these days; the mirth and the familiarity scares you. You like your city in your stories where you can dress it up in your favourite colours. Your hair smells like the tar of this city and your stories carry the fragrance of the hills that you've visited around a million times in your dreams. Wish you were here plays in the background while you scribble your heart out in the folds of the night. The city takes you in. It is almost chaotic how you toss and turn at night. Sleepless nights. Maddening poetic nights. You see faces float in front of your eyes - some known, others never seen and some like clumsy collages. There are brittle words in your mind, words that break and shatter on paper giving your stories jagged endings. And, all you do is wish you wouldn't kill your stories that way.

On some days, you leave your windowside to venture out into the moonlight. All you carry are tunes in your head, a tiny red notebook to record the tunes and your dusty ol' camera to capture those tunes in frames. She does look the type who likes being alone. She is her own friend. Nah! She isn't lonely, just a soul who enjoys her solitude. Noone understands that alone and lonely are two different words. Noone knows that you force the loneliness down your throat. The city wraps you up in its anonymity, and you probably enjoy that. You like sitting under the clutter of the stars and chant words in your mind.. and write more stories. More often than not, the city's lifelessness kills the storyteller inside you until you find another fragile muse. Sometimes you take yourself back to your city, travelling through memories in metro rides and homemade brew. But you don't miss home. Your mouth already tastes like this city. Time to leave this city, you ask yourself. You are finding home here. There are people reading your stories, understanding every word, every expression even though you're trying hard to hide them under your eyelids. You're changing, dear. Becoming like the city itself and it isn't fair. I should run away, you tell yourself.

I see you from a distance now. You are penning today's stories down onto the red notebook, filling in details about your latest muse, your beau, whose fragrance is still fresh in your memory from last night's fervent lovemaking. Even the whirls of cigarette smoke and the cup of evening brew speaks of the words that you silently bleed in. I know you will stare into the mirror soon after and wonder what happened to all those days that you've left behind. Buried under those parchments of stories?

I'm amused at your change. Almost a little shocked at how the purple of your eyes have turned a greyish hue. You're becoming the city. The city has swallowed you, storyteller. I still cannot believe you are me. You are me in another city.

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