A moon gazer's doubts.

And I guess I realized at that moment that I really did love her. Because there was nothing to gain, and that didn’t matter.

S. Chbosky.

At that time, I had only wanted to hear her side of the story. What she had to say for herself. It wasn’t like I cared if she wanted to, or, was fucking the entire street. I did not care to judge her. That was her life. What I did care to know was my right to know. If she told me, I would live with it, be not bothered by it, but only because she was honest enough to tell me. I could always say to myself; at least, you knew the terms.

The other night, some guy had walked in her apartment. It was a face she knew by all accounts. When I knocked her door after a while and came in, she was fidgety and insisted- quite urgently, I come around later. When I did the next day and asked her about it, she would pretend no such thing had happened. I do not know if she knows this but, she shot me that day, that late afternoon she made that denial (?). She pointed a magnum at me and shot me.

I have tried to rationalise her reply or lack of, but, it does not add up. Never did. The morality of the situation is not what bothers me. This is not good or bad. Just the lingering feeling that one is blind in this situation, and consequently, unable to chart one’s course; led on by the suspicions of a denial or lack of it.

 That was a major pivot in our affairs. I remember quietly taking what little of my effects I had at hers and walking out. Early next morning, as she came out her building, her travel luggage dragging behind her, I was sitting with friends doing the MG ritual. There was no hello between us, no friendly chit-chat, not even for keeping up appearances. I only, briefly, looked up at her once. That morning was deliberate. It was a morning for hurting and the hurt.

I sent her a text recently, two nights ago to be precise. In it, I said I was sorry for the incident. I was wrong and sorry- those were my exact words. But before that, I had gone to visit at her new apartment. Almost two years have passed since when we were neighbours, intimately sneaking around...

We stood on her top floor balcony, looking down at muffled figures in the street. It is the harmattan season and she has wrapped herself in my denim jacket. The full moon shone brightly and very soon it was all we talked about. We playfully pointed out what cluster of stars were its groupies, which far ones were distant lovers or side chicks. She insisted the North Star was the estranged first wife. We laughed. We huddled, close, but not too close. We talked; past and future, our assumptions, our ambitions. Then it came to ‘us’, and eventually, that incident. She asked, (I think her voice broke once or twice) what exactly that coldness had been about that morning. Apparently, she only saw or felt the effect and not the cause. To me, I could only question the circumstances leading to the cause. Did she not shoot me at point blank range or was that my insecurities behind the gun? And later, was she leading me on again, reinforcing the darkness that one was smote in . . . . ?

March 28, 2011.