Smoke...

I gave him a prissy schoolteacher look…the urchin so brazenly puffing on a cigarette… he is hardly 13- years-old and already smoking, I tsk-tsked …is it laced, I wondered…unaffected, he took another breathy puff… his cheeks hollow… his hair matted… and his lean and hungry body sprawled on the pavement…I could feel the blood rushing to my groin …my lips parted in desire…I considered my erection…it was harmless really…the pitiful lump in my trousers…of no consequence whatsoever…I will not work on it…
But how dirty I felt…

Tears…


At times, when I push her over the edge, I see maa tremble…she is breathing, frothing, rage from head to toe …her mouth opening to say something but overwhelmed by a gush of saliva… it does pain me to see her so … helpless, pathetic and angry…
Yet I push her…waiting for her to collapse… both yearning and dreading the spasms of tears and saliva…like the time I used to take our neighbour’s 4-year-old kid for walks and pretend to abandon him in the middle of the road…he would invariably break into tears, his arms stretched out in a helpless plea… I would rush to him, and promise everlasting companionship only to repeat the trick…
How traumatic it must have been for his tender four-year-old soul…how traumatic it must be for maa’s 54-year-old soul …to be so offended by her own flesh and blood…to be reminded of all the wrong decisions she made in her life by her own son…how unnatural it is to be chastised by one’s own son …
But there is something wonderful about tears I think…there is something so cathartic to see them roll down her cheek…