She pitched up. Wrapped in dull colours protecting herself from all that is visible and invisible, her eyes revealed a cold ironical stare, while her shoulders rolled towards hidden hands, thrust deep in secure pockets. Sporting a helmet beanie pulled well over her sensitive ears and a starch white padded coat, she stood at the gate peering in, getting ready like a waiting cobra.
Waiting for a smile to warm her iciness; waiting for warm words of ‘hello’ and ‘lovely to see you’; waiting for a hug to unfreeze her frame, she stood like a thorn.
When words began to flow from broken ice they were jagged, angled arrows piercing soft muscle covered in thin cloth.
Instead of satin, rounded plosives, came hardened fricatives that frightened. Instead of gentle grace, unsettled agitation shot from ice white.
Defending, bobbing and weaving, deflecting, withdrawing, hiding, side stepping, swerving and curving, I ricochet from every shot, every name, comment, crippling, critical, carping, slap and stab.
Why the antagonism? Why?
My inquisitor, smiled, satisfied … and left.
Pummelled and suspended in artificial paralysis, I sat in an upside down, inside out world, arrested by injured awe.
‘Beat again … breathe … beat again … breathe … beat again … breathe’, I sighed.
As cold arrows waned and gentle rain rinsed my numbed senses, breath entered with grace.
‘Hello’, I said, ‘please come in and kiss me. Let your kind fingers warm my frozen face and lift up my eyes to gaze on your beauty. Smile for me, for I am lost in cruel worlds.