The silken lingerie clung to Matilda’s body like seaweed on mossy rocks. Her loose hair-ends curved lapping her waistline. Tilda, short for Matilda, read a book of poetry in bed. She lay on her right hip with the lamp behind her, as she read. The season’s first rain began. It distracted her as she listened in to its untrained rhythm—raw and mesmerizing.

Her index finger page-marked the book. Holding it close, she stepped down to gaze through the bay window. The streetlights shed a dim yellowish glow on a cucumber lawn, awakened by the rain song. Matilda’s eyes caught a four-winged insect on the window sill. She had seen it before, lying here yesterday in the same place and in the same manner—stone-cold ten days on. It had not pulverized. It was clean like a newly issued morning; not moth-or-maggot-ridden. Strangely, this tiny creature’s wings still stood straight—delicate, pellucid, unbroken. It hadn’t drooped even slightly, almost ready to take off.

A man was in her life—a mad poet in love. Younger—far too young, reciting his own poetry into her ears, words raining soft music. He told her that the first letter of his name V and the first letter of Matilda’s name M conjoined to form a human heart. V at the bottom and M on top, he insisted that she wrapped him around with the letter M. All he had to do was to think about her and that was enough for effortless arousal. Tilda took a shine to him. A compelling metaphor of love, but she felt confused and afraid to engage. This lover was too keen. Every word flushed her cheeks. Do others not write poetry far better than him? 

She was the enigmatic Saki of his imagination. It could be catastrophic if she decided to leave him. He could droop like a white lily without her affection. Depression could inflict upon him or even worse he could commit suicide on her account. She couldn’t risk that. She couldn’t push him away. Neither could she commit to his brazen advances.

Fake it then. Feign madness? She told herself. To him, she told that her thoughts of him fleshed out her insides. Across continents, her words swelled a desire within him at the same time—the telepathy of delightful restlessness, the feverish wakefulness, the wet dreams at blue midnights. Oh! How were all these even possible through such a faraway land? The much-needed love; the warmth of her arms, the sultry kisses; the heavy drunkenness of love. The poet smelled her sandalwood scent, a whiff of her body in his own space. Honey trickled down her satin skin; a ravel of emotional knit; spellbound in his Devi’s grips.

Why? Was she really dead in love like the four-winged fly? She cautioned herself. Or did she only play this role as a pretext to save this man’s soul, much younger than her? There were rigid social and biological paradigms to be considered. Even the most daring of rebels would adhere, no? To such forces of nature?

But this spirited romantic, likechlorine was to water, was enmeshed into her. At a glimpse of her pictures on any fair day, he sang a cacophony of high-pitched off-tune songs in a bid to get her attention. Tilda laughed listening to his recorded songs. But her criticisms fell on deaf ears. Much like his romance, he paid no heed to the natural constraints at all. But he told her, he didn’t care. This was real for him. Was it not real for her too? He asked her, can you deny that you love me? Do you not also feel romance for me? How can you not know that we are real, real—it is the real thing? He regurgitated.She said yes to him, but also held to her obstinate empathy.

Seriously? Tilda looked at the fly, cold and dead, whose still unbroken wings lay here on the window sill. No matter, his poetry was not dead— God Forbid—his rising passion was not dead.Speak for yourself. She couldn’t see him get hurt on account of her. That was all. The only path of engagement she allowed her bold lover, to respond to his crazy ideas. Unnatural, how she moved him. Not even a girl could do what she did to him. She, who couldn’t compete with those girls in love or love-making, at her age. But his insistence was maddening. As he was saying in broken dialect. See? Your words, your voice, the thought of your very presence is making me palpitate. My heart is racing. I am feeling it. How can I snap out of this? You’re inside my mind, my bones, my blood, and my heart. Heart-break, because you’re distanced, but my heart mends itself in anticipation that we would meet someday. 

In the heart of it, Tilda envisioned a narrative. That a much younger version of herself was at his house at an Eid gathering. There he was sitting at the far end of a shady balcony. She hadn’t seen him at first. He sent a little boy with a note. He had seen her. The note had said to look up and to find him here where he was sitting. When Tilda looked up, he curled his index finger and asked her to join him there. She obeyed and went straight up. She stood before him. He took her in his arms and crushed her on his hairy chest. Her head on his chest, she took a sharp breath. After a pause, her unwrinkled hands caressed his neck, his face, and his lips. Her body danced in the rhythm of love—full of joy, and mushy music.

But in its true essence, the reality was this. That heloved her as she was—her wrinkled hands, her greys. That she was splendidly beautiful now than she had been. She belonged only to him, his impeccable Minerva. This forever, she could never gauge the depths, the ocean of his heart, deeper than anything else. She could leave him if she liked. She could stop talking to him, shun him, argue with him. But she could never bring him out of her. Where they were one, rightly or wrongly in the purity of love—hardwired. Fake or not, he heard her climax. And he came undone.

The dead-fly’s wings were erect. She could easily blow it away; too easy, as she could cool down a bowl of hot soup—the hardwood of constraints upon her. Her lips pursed. Her mobile lit up. She paced up and took the call. His gentle voice coaxing. It drew her in, seducing. His poetry book, The Prism of Love was underway; she, the dark lady was its inlay. Her subterfuge had slipped her heart relayed.

“Who am I? Your girlfriend—your lover?” she asked.

“No, you are Matilda?”

The penny dropped. Tilda felt, the butterflies had just been sucked out of the cucumber garden. Only the dead fly lay high and dry.

…

Multiple contest winner for short fiction, Mehreen Ahmed is an award-winning Australian novelist born in Bangladesh. Her historical fiction novel The Pacifist is a Drunken Druid’s Editor’s Choice. Midwest Book Review and DD Magazine have also acclaimed her works, translated into German, Greek, and Bangla, reprinted, anthologized, selected as Editor’s Pick, Best of, and made the top 10 reads multiple times. They have also been nominated for Pushcart, botN, and James Tait. She has authored eight books and has been twice a reader and juror for international awards. Her recent publications include Litro, Otoliths, Popshot Quarterly (forthcoming) Alien Buddha, and more.