The Girl in the Coffee Shop

The Girl in the Coffee Shop

 There she sits in the coffee shop, everyday,waiting.

                  The coffee shop is brightly lit (as all coffee shops are) and the chair she sits on is made of faux leather and fake rosewood.Fake smiles plastered on the shop personnel, as they speak to you with faux -courtesy,memorised monologues and barely disguised contempt.

The coffee might be fake too (you know the donuts really are), but who cares as long as it promises to jolt you awake.

                            Across the window lies an eternal twilight, the sun just below the horizon and the skies sufficiently dimmed for the stars to come out and play.As the inevitable darkness descends, the streets are set ablaze with a flurry of motion of the masses of humanity rushing towards the safety of their homes.Tiny pools of fluorescent lights shine their cold aseptic lights in a futile effort to illuminate the dimming streets.

This is where we meet everyday.

We meet and then we get lost in each other.

                    She wears a pink sleeveless top that exposes her well toned arms and dark blue jeans that conceal her ample and rounded hips.On her right hand,she wears a dainty silver bracelet inscribed with a charm in balinese that promises to drive away malevolent spirits and on her ears -tiny horseshoe diamond earrings.

              Everyday she wears the same dress.

                                  The familiarity is oddly comforting but never boring.

                  On her face she wears a familiar smile that I've now become used to.Her lush dark hair cascades over her shoulders and  chest, curling just above the swell of her breasts.

              Her face is ever radiant -perhaps a trick of the light or perhaps a trick of the mind's eye, but her aquiline nose ,her full lips on a large sensuous mouth that house a row of picture perfect teeth her high cheekbones that give away tiny dimples when she smiles makes her formidable,makes her worthy to be stared at.

                                   I stare at her photograph that lies perched on my desktop everyday for a few minutes,hoping that somehow her magic  might diminish and I might fall out of love with her.She calmly stares back at me from the photograph (that she doesn't know I have), and her eyes sometimes comes alive and shimmer like limpid pools of black gold,and her smile although frozen in an instant of time dares me playfully to stop staring at them and look away -never to look back again.

                                   

With her chin resting delicately on her palm,she looks back at me as long as I look at her.

There is no one else.Just You and Me,she whispers...or so it seems.

          My daily meditation and contemplation continues-and it feels like we talk to each other without words,as our fingers extend over infinity to trace each other and we meet when we dream on restless nights and in the wakeful dreams of warm lazy afternoons.

She looks strong.

She looks confident.

So full of life.

And yet so...

            To be vulnerable is to incite the male ego...

Ironically, I've always been attracted towards strong women, women who don't need men, women who don't need me...to whom I'm inconsequential...And she was one of those.

Wasn't I the speck of dust that you could have so easily blown away?

'sometimes I feel so exposed,so weak....I don't understand this world, it's people or their games...or this life...nothing makes sense'

'Please do something...' she said.

What I should have said...

Please don't ask me for help.

I might just fall in love with you.

I will help you,

but because I love you

and not because 

you asked me to.

But it was too late for that now.

               Every man is different, but there are a number of overwhelming similarities between us.

To be vulnerable is to incite the male ego...by asking for help,you show the man that you need him,that somehow his male machismo is superior.

In these days of female empowerment and emancipation,any redundant male would fall in love with you if you made him feel wanted.

It isn't often that a man now gets to play the 'Knight in shining armour' who slays the dragon and saves the princess with a kiss.

Did she know that?

The easiest way to make a man fall in love with you is to display how vulnerable you are,and how safe you feel with him.

She must have known it.

Every time she asked for help, I fell deeper in love.

Damn Her!

Now I was just as helpless and vulnerable as she was.

(Based on a true feeling.)