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When We Don’t Belong!

by Poornima Laxmeshwar

A 33-year-old woman’s craving for passion and the tale of her affair with a younger man come alive in Poornima Laxmeshwar’s story.

I knew instinctively you were lying when you said I want to ravish you. I always found your enticing words hard to believe, yet they lit every pound of flesh in my body and set a fire that was hard to put off. After all you were so young and I could expect you to say these lines filled with lust and longing. The problem was that I had to hold myself back. But how could I when my world was brimming with a sense of lost excitement I felt ages ago? When you said that 24 and 33 are happening numbers, trust me, I wasn’t concerned about our ages. Lust had taken complete siege of my mind. And there was no way I could escape because your beautiful lies came like rolling stones — smooth and unhesitant.

It was not just another day. The air in the living room was thick with romance, what with love songs playing in the background when that was the last thing I needed. My senses were on a high as though I had gulped down a whole bottle of Vodka. What the Smirnoff I thought.

My body was craving for some passion in the wee hours of the morning like I was going to disintegrate into pieces if I didn’t get it and of course my husband wasn’t someone I was longing for. I chose to ignore the dumb, random wild thoughts and instead picked up my laptop because work made me feel useful at times. Or so I guessed. Content writing as a saviour. Just as I was thinking of writing the 1000-word article on web hosting, my phone beeped with your text. I want you now! it said and I simply didn’t know how to resist or deny those words. Even though playing with words has been my forte, your brief sentences always had a rogue effect. Your Kiss me was enough to lead my trail of thoughts to a new world that bound you to me and me to you. It gave me the kick I was looking for, the adventure that I missed, and brought to life the sneaky behaviour that I was made of and the feeling of importance as though your world would simply perish without me.

***

And so I meet you in your dingy room. Your room so full of odours, books, clothes, and leftovers has little space for my perfume and presence. This time of our togetherness wouldn’t even find a corner to settle down or linger. It would just vanish with the smoke from your next cigarette. I find strands of long hair on the messy white tiles, looking like doodles of a lost dreamer, screaming a story of their own, a story  I choose to ignore. All I want to do is to etch every bit of me into you. There is no space for anyone else.

You undress me and with every piece of clothing undone, I ignore your lies of your love for me. When your hands touch me I know I need you more than ever. I need you to be mine in this very split second. You take a thorough look at me, praise my sagging breasts, tummy fat, stretch marks, and tell me that it makes me a woman, every bit of who I am. And I think that maybe in some insignificant way,  I have touched your heart enough to last a lifetime. After many years you may think of me and have a smile of conquest. You don’t know when a woman loves with all her heart she is ready to lose, win, kill at the same time. Today, I break the walls I have created, the boundaries that I have marked and let passion flow as easy as a river. We discover each other with our tongues connecting with a language that needs no words. I taste your warm lies and I think somewhere I have fallen in love with this taste. Every flavour that you are made of entices my senses and I want to belong to you, in every possible way. I want to wrap these moments and keep them under the sheets with us, with no one to uncover all that is happening below and beyond.

You are drained but I can see that your eyes have a story about us that you want to brag about. I won’t stop you. You and I are falling autumn leaves, drifting apart without a clue of our destination. I can’t help thinking now about how it all began at a common friend’s engagement party. As you stand up, I take a look at you, bare, for one last time. I know you are leaving in the next two days after your two-month long vacation.  I know I can’t stop you from going away and I know that you will be unable to hold the storm that is rising in me. 24 and 33 are not happening numbers in our case, I conclude.

Poornima Laxmeshwar resides in the garden city Bangalore and works as a content writer for a living. Her poems have appeared in ColdNoon, Vayavya, MuseIndia, Writers Asylum, The Aerogram, Stockholm Literary Review, Northeast Review, Brown Critique amongst many others. Her haiku have found space in several magazines.
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