Just a Woman
A woman sits alone in a crowded restaurant. Her sitting posture felt as if she had broken out of a painting and finally lived her life as a human being. The long hair covers her face and arm. The golden necklace around her neck is shinier than all the lights of the restaurant. And everything complements her red dress.
The dress is eye-catching, as if someone liquidated thousands of rubies to make her attire. With one glance at her, you can assume her struggling days are well behind her. But I took a few.
After a while, she looks around to see if anyone is paying attention to her. Sadly, nobody looks at her, and she returns with a gloomier face each time. She found a world where she feels herself, but a slight disruption happens every time she craves others' acceptance.
Every time she looks around for comfort, nobody answers at all. But she never loses hope; she raises her head more optimism than before and returns with more disappointment.
The cycle of her ouroboros is vacuuming her love and innocence for the world. Now I can see specific changes in her habits. She is grinding her teeth after eating food. Sometimes the hair leaves her face and exposes tears slowly making their way to her mouth, dropping on the food.
I feel she is trying; she has everything a woman desires but fails to get one thing that others have- love. Something that can be seen from a mile away, yet nobody bats an eye.
She is getting weaker, but it never shows up on her face. The mask she has on her face is intense, she sewed the cover, so it will never fall. Only she knows what's inside and who she is, her dreams, hope, and wishes.
Sometimes the masks fell, no matter how careful we were with them. Reality hits us like a gushing wind to throw our land of fantasy. It happened to her, and For a second, the time just stopped. There was calming music that lifted the dread around her. I could see her face void of any life, markings left from tears, her lips were freckled, and her eyes were dark as the night sky with no stars. A genuine sadness drips from her face for a second as the shackles from the mask break from her body, leaving her in a vulnerable state.
But she didn't want people to see her without the mask. There is a string hanging from her face; instead of removing it, she pulled the thread to wear the mask tightly around her face and then tied it with a knot. The birds were back in the cage, the lovable air around her now gone, and the music of a loveable person abruptly stopped. The dread around her is now thicker than it used to be, once a lake of clean water turned into a muddy swamp.
She then fixes her mask, grabs her belongings, and leaves the room. Yet, nobody even bid her goodbye when she leaves. I could still see her through a glass window as she stopped in the middle of the street, looking up at the sky with a mask on her face.
