the girl with the ribbons

The gravel in my sandals rubbed against my feet, threatening to grind my toes into dust. It was a sort of discomfort that even the adolescent mind could not easily romanticise and forget. I wasn’t myself for the evening; aimless, absentminded, and fanciful, I would surely have drifted away into the sky if not for that unpleasant sensation, the counterweight to unreality.

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I blinked at an empty audience, displaying the pair of winged eyes that I had laboured so hard to achieve: Sephora, uneven, speckled with imperfections, a black that melded into the night so that nobody could see it even if they tried.

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I slid the buds of my lifeline into my ears and clicked a button on my mobile screen. At fifteen, music was a morphine drip. The slow and steady beat of the acoustic, the singer’s soothing voice — it was an instant, addictive relief. I nodded gently to the liberating rhythms, easing into every loosened limb and muscle, and yet I had already slipped away.

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A sign I saw earlier had indicated heavy rainfall. Accordingly, silver needles plunged towards the ground at blinding speeds, forming into tiny crowns upon impact. It occurred to me that it would’ve been wise to heed the warnings. 

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I drew to a pause at a red light, its glaring signal softened by the shimmering wet. A rush of cars coursed by, their movement provoking beads of otherwise dormant rainwater to trail angrily in their wake. Their tail-lights delighted in the chase, illuminating the droplets into handfuls of magic dust. I imagined briefly that one of those cars carried someone I knew, and at the thought of a particular face, I considered adjusting my shirt or touching up my eyeliner. But then I decided against it, withdrawing behind my umbrella, assuming anonymity. And then the cars were gone.

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The light turned green, giving me passage to continue. As I crossed, the incoming vehicles slowed, their rippled reflections shimmering in and out of existence. I stepped into a puddle,  disturbing the fickle tranquility of the asphalt. Even then, nothing was more concrete than that I belonged to a world of indestructible certainties. It was, nonetheless, a joy to indulge in the transient.

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The sound of blasting drums interrupted my perfect melancholia. I reacted quickly, giving the tab on the wire of my earphones two indignant clicks. The noise was cut short, and the song was quickly replaced by a much calmer tune. I nodded: I wasn’t in the mood for fast music right now.

I lifted my mask to steal a crisp breath. To crowd out the virus, we had been subjected to strict rations, and all this fresh air was already signed away to be wasted. I was sure that no one would notice if I took more inhales than I was due; I only hoped that they would not accuse me of contaminating it.

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At that thought, my attention was directed to those walking alongside me. They were huddled within pockets of dryness under individual umbrellas. Their eyes were fixed ahead as they trudged heavily through the drizzle. Some were clad in stiff suits and hard gaits. Others wore shabby T-shirts and basketball shorts. All of them, however, were brisk, and I wondered how many of them were nearing their destinations, and how many were more like me, wanderers with nowhere to go. It was impossible to guess.

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Having realised that I had come to a dead end in my absentminded state, I spun on my heel to go back the way I came. Curious gazes -- suspicious, even -- were shot my way. Look at me, an outsider, an alien; true locals didn’t have time for pointless strolls in cities that never even slept.

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At a small distance, a faithful bus stop withstood the weather’s harassments. A disgruntled boy with a vibrant soccer uniform and a dirty drawstring bag dutifully waited for his ride at its nonexistent queue. He spoke annoyed, unintelligible words into his phone, his hand on his hip, his feet apart -- the stance of a man caught in the throes of city life. 

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A rain-doused double decker approached; its fierce neon lights cut through the dark. The bus clumsily opened its gates and sighed out a burst of cool air as it slowed to a stop. The boy, still engaged in vehement conversation, boarded and disappeared within. I had half a mind to step on with him, but the bus had jealously shut up its doors before I could retrieve my wallet, so I watched it drive away instead. By then, many images had flashed through my mind, ones of the boy and I standing side by side, ones of him describing the world that I inhabited but did not understand, during our journey to no location in particular. But the opportunity had wilted behind the closed bus doors, and I guessed that I would never know what could’ve been. 

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The sand in my shoes became ever more grating. At long last, the anxieties of a solitary girl walking in the dark gripped me and forced me to turn back. A relic of the days gone by, the moment was eternal, the fear of it only fleeting. In a future too near to dread, I knew, I would deeply relish these moments, turning them over and over again on my tongue. It was a privilege — no, a blessing — to meander in a summer shower with no obligation to the imperative of direction.