Nothings

What is it, this attraction? This brain fuzziness that makes you act unlike yourself, makes you regress to just ego, the need to satisfy a desire?

I tell myself that we won’t meet again. He seems like a pseudo-liberal, entitled bigot (I am sure!), not even attractive, but my stomach is churning, churning, churning the whole day, and Anu finds me mooning on the wall-encompassing bathroom mirror, and I wasn’t even saying things aloud this time.

I tell myself that it’s nothing, that it does not matter. That he won’t message, I won’t message, that I will forget.

But knowing this won’t make it hurt any less when it happens, when the time comes, and I won’t ask, he won’t ask. I won’t confirm a meeting, and he won’t.

Only the longing, longing, longing, at the end of long days,

When I come home, unslept, lay down my tired body, and watch myself give over to sleep. But before that, there will remembering, of imagined kisses and love bites, and oh, hello! I liked this and this too.

There will be texting, to another someone I have not even met, but her north Indian casual nothings, her good mornings, her bad English make me feel warm and wanted. I wonder what she is using me for, but I am happy to be a part of it as long as it lasts.

Until that too goes away, and the days resume their usual, sassy appeal – of knowing that I can kick ass, that I will get the job done, that there’s nothing to be afraid of.

No more doubting, wondering if I am good enough, thinking whether he liked me, whether I was boring, why he did not call.

This is not a paean to anybody, definitely not to a man I don’t even know. It’s just a moment, and that it happened is no less real because it was fleeting, and because feeling this way is not particularly rational of me.