:: Claque ::

2.16 a.m.

The night whittled into morning; our little circle of friendship spun intimate zodiacs of cheerful stories, tensed confessions and tender troubles. I smiled inwardly while watching my girls. We've stumbled through the doors of adulthood with the clumsy grace of age―our school-going, books-hitching days have been eclisped by a certain repressed maturity; there you go, that's our coming of age.

But we are rapt with humour still, even as our homage is now made to different gods. Once we crusaded for acceptance and fought for grades; now we're shielded by the armour of womanhood and our war song is waged against work, love and family battles. We've never been more individualistic than we are now, but I'd like to think our coming together is still a celebration of the collective identity we've branded on ourselves―a brazen logo of love if you will―a decade or so ago.

Stay close, girls. Thank you.

***

Later, in bed. I was the sandman's wanton toy, my mind claimed by petty senses. The heartbeat of my thoughts felt like a claque―hired help, applauding mindlessly to a rhetoric rhythm. I turned and tossed―the heat of the night is a banzai bell!―and, you know what, I missed you. Just a little, with the offhanded keenness that was echoing seconds in a separate universe. The sudden emptiness that seeped within the thoughts of my dreamscape trash called on Margaret Atwood's quiet lines from There Is Only One of Everything:

Not a tree but the tree
we saw, it will never exist, split by the wind and bending down
like that again.

There is only one of everything. No separate universe, no parallel lives, no celestial skies shaded by the languid magic of romantic treason.

I let sleep wash over me then, as the Sunday light broke free from the reins of night.