A boring one

She flicked her pencil, beating its end to her spiral notebook. Tap tap tap. She thought helplessly, if this pencil was a magic wand, three taps and this blank page is going to be filled with the words she needed.

She was stucked.

She tried to reach her coffee mug and halfway remembered a fly just landed and chose her coffee for its dying bed.  She glanced at her kitchen, five steps away from her and decided it was just too much effort. Besides, this was supposed to be easy.

She just needed one or two sentences, hopefully five or maybe a stanza for her best friend’s wedding invitation card. Instead of putting some verse from the bible or a famous love poem from a famous poet, her best friend wanted her piece on her wedding card invitation. It’s going to be printed on a gold translucent paper, with black ink, and her name underneath it.

What do you want me to write?

Well, we think there’s no one better to write about us than you, she smiled and to secure the agreement, held her hand and gave it a slight pressure, she couldn’t say no.

So here she is, tapping and tapping.

She tried to recollect her memories, what did she know about the couple? Unless that they had become couple since three years ago, she didn’t remember anything particularly interesting. They had some fights, some moments, just like any normal couple. Guiltily, she thought that the couple was a bit dull. She could laid their future before them, a vacation to the beach, a little house and couple of kids, she tweets religiously about her domestic life, he calmly accept the fact that he’s no longer allowed to spend more than a million for his hobby. Dull.

She pushed away the notebook and picked her iPad, sliding pages and felt, surprisingly, a bit depressed. She could hear her mother’s voice in her head: Nothing against you is interesting for you. 

Was that true?  Was she naturally a cynic over everything she disagrees with? She disagrees with most of what the president has been saying on public and she disagrees with overrated feminism but she doesn’t get cynical toward those subjects. But when it comes to love, something inside her is angry.

She loved once, she remembered, a fine young man with dark skin and bushy wavy hair that always seemed like a mess. He wore black rimmed glasses when he read and watched TV. He spent too much time in front of his screen, typing and typing the night away. He was always busy and he looked like he had a burden of the world on his shoulders when he worked. She couldn’t remember when she started to love him, maybe after their first meet or was it after their first kiss? But she remembered that she loved him so much she let him slipped into his own world, forgetting her, forgetting them.

On one unpredictable occasion, he told her that he loved her, so casually; she felt she was caught red-handed. Without second thought, she said I love you, too. There was nothing strange or nothing wild about love; it was just as natural as the air they breathed.

She pushed the iPad and reached for her pencil and notebook. She thought maybe thinking about him would result for something positive in this ridiculous poem writing. So she let her guards down and gave wings to her memory to fly back, further back.

She remembered the last day she saw him. It was a chilly night and rain had just started to drizzle. She remembered she was clinging to a false hope. She was hoping for a ‘no’ but she knew she would get a big ‘yes’. She could tell all the signs, but she chose to ignore it. And now the time had come. He was going to leave her. The chilly night and the rain were a perfect background to this sad love story.

Where was love when she needed it the most?

Was it true that things were easier said than done?

Was this a warning not to put hope on someone else’s existence?

She tapped the rubber end of her pencil. Tap. Tap. Tap.

She wondered though, did she still love him?

Tap.

His unruly hair.

Tap.

His fingers dancing on the keyboard.

Tap.

His I love you.

Tap.

No sparkle, no butterfly in her stomach, nothing.

She dropped the pencil and realized, she still loved him.

But now, without the element of surprise, it became kind of ironic.

She scribbled something on her blank page, paused for a moment, then continued.

After some minutes she typed it on her iPad and sent it to her best friend’s email inbox.

She received the reply just a few minutes later. Her best friend loved it and it was going to be printed tomorrow.

If you must know what kind of love poem a damaged woman wrote, here it is:

A Boring Love

To share my pain, my joy

To be there in sick and in health,

To be faithful and to be true,

If that’s not boring enough,

I have to do this until death do us part.

But if it means to watch you sleep peacefully every night,

to quarrel with you over TV programmes,

to kiss you on the head every time you look tired,

to let you sleep on my lap while I try to read today’s paper,

to smell your cologne on my clothes,

To hold your hand every time we walk side by side,

to answers your ‘how do I look’ questions every time we go out,

to cook your favourite dish (which by the way, I despise) every week,

I’ll say I do to this mundane and dull life.

As bad as it sounds,

At least I have you to share it with.

Let it be boring, because so far, I’ve known only a person that can kill my boredom.

And (surprise), it’s you.