Like a Song

A Story by Aryan Stevens

When I sit down to write, I often do not know what I want to write. It's probably because, as Bukowski would say I still have nothing to say. Maybe I have nothing to say because I don't think much, and the least that I think usually dissolves within the half hour smogged room with a joint roll in between my lips. Yet, I know that I have felt. I have felt a thousand things in one singular moment, as those feelings overlapped each other inside my head while I only succumbed to the weight of the revolving thoughts.

So why write, then?

Maybe because I do not want her to leave. Not just yet. It's too soon.

The first time I saw her, I did not notice her. She was just another girl in the class, with another pretty, with another beautiful long hair, with another pair of large black eyes, and with another smile. She was just another girl in class who, too, did not think much.

The first time I spoke to her, she told me that she did not listen to the kind of music that I listened. No Bob Dylan, no Jimmy Hendrix, no Leonard Cohen, no Bach, no Sufjan Stevens, none of it. But she didn't mind listening to them when I offered her my phone for the first time. She said, "Oh my, he is soothing" every time Sufjan Stevens said out All the Glory in the song Casimir Pulaski Day. She would later ask me to share a few songs with her, as he told me that she has always been listening to Jon Bon Jovi, the Beatles, Queen, and BackStreet Boys.

She was just another girl who was nothing like me, or she was nothing like anyone else that I have met before. She was just her. And no one else.

"You write, as well?" She exclaimed, on the first day that I took her out for dinner.

It was just a roadside cafe, where she had never come. I was a regular customer, I was known to be that boy who does not talk to anyone or does nothing all day. Except loiter about the streets in my usual tracks and a loose t-shirt, with my headphones on and my diary dangling by my side.

"Somewhat," I said, casually.

- "What do you write? I mean stories, poems, plays."

- "I don't have a genre, honestly. I have never really arranged what I write. It's just too spontaneous and formless."

- "So you are the abstract intellectual, as they call!"

- "No."

- "No?"

- "What do you read?"

- "You know, I don't really read much. Just a few things that my mother suggests. I am not at all familiar with poetry."

- "At least you have used the term right."

She would smile at me every time I looked at her. Not that she had to, or not that I would smile at her all the time. But she would just smile. I never knew if she actually would smile at me or it was the folded corner of her thick lips which gave the impression of a happy mouth, but I liked looking at her when she would do that.

The second time I saw her, I fell in love. this time I had noticed her. She was sitting in front of me at the library and making notes for the presentation that was supposed to happen at the end of the day in the political class. She wasn't much interested in it, but she would work. "I love it, this adrenaline rush that I get, you know. Meeting the deadline, being empty in the head." She threw those words at me while she twirled around the library collecting books, picking up chapters and making notes. Her thin, tall body entered and exited every coop and corner collecting archives. She was alive the most then. She did not fumble when giving instructions and did not let fumble when receiving them. After six hours of vigorous running, screaming, screeching, talking, blabbering and a little bit of writing, she pulled me out and asked if I had a cigarette.

We walked down the wet lanes of the dilapidated city, with a thousand red flags hanging across every wall, every railing, every roof, and most cars. She didn't seem to care enough about it.

"Do you ever work?" she asked, passing over the cigarette to me.

"Just sometimes." I shrugged.

"Other times...oh, let me guess, you stare out of the window."

- "Yes, and wait for the extraterrestrial beings..."

- "Oh, don't bother."

She gave out a brief chuckle. "I am not that useless, you know." I scratched my head. She patted me on the back, and said, "Did you write anything today?"

I read out a small poem to her. It was about nothing. I don't know why I read it out to her. She looked confused.

"You know, I don't understand what you write. But I like listening to it."

she never understood what I wrote, neither did ever try explaining to her what I was writing. We were only too intrigued by each other to ask questions; we knew we had questions in our mind but didn't know if those questions could be put into words.

We would spend a lot of time together, though. She was nothing like anyone I had met before, I was nothing like those whom she would hang out with. We were comfortable in our own ignorance about each other. We just explored each other, as much as we could. She explored my words, I explored her body. She explored my mind, I could sometimes feel her inside it. Most of what I did, or what I thought had put down to a pattern which would fit her. Perfectly. And perfectly it did. I could feel the ground beneath my feet slowly rising and the sky above disappearing. It all flowed and went right across like a song does. As long as it is playing, you know exactly how and what you feel, your thoughts begin to join hands and give you perspective, you realize the depth of your feelings, you do imagine but at the same time, your imagination is as real as it could get.

She did not stay around for too long. We just did not talk anymore one day. Maybe she needed some space to breath, and it was time for me to grow. I still see her with her friends, they talk about clothes, shops, other girls and other boys. She sees me and looks away. We don't matter to each other anymore. We probably don't even listen to each other anymore. But then, I knew that she was there, I was there, we were there, and there some very beautiful songs.