A woman.
Mid forties. Or, early fifties.
Thick hair laced with some white strands.
And as they were pulled backwards with a simple rubber band, more white strands to reveal.
That rubber band was probably the first thing she got when she fished for something to tame her mane.
A glance at the clock.
5.00 AM. Sunday.
Perfect timing and routine biorhythm to get dressed to the office.
Some lone stars were still trying their very best to shine - hogging the night sky prior to dawn.
Work is like a book, or, books - Some come with depth, others are pure paper cows.
That's what we are paid for - To make sense of the senseless red tapes.
This is what she used to lecture her daughter.
Ah, daughter.
A heavy exhale.
Strange familiarity. Familiar with the strangeness.
9.30 AM. Sunday.
Unlike books, work can never be finished. Else, the employee would be finished instead.
After all, what is left when work is finished ? Redundant job position.
Just like the strange familiarity. What is left when such feeling runs low ?
Estranged familiarity.
With newspaper underarm, the woman slowly walked back to her home.
A heavy exhale.
It is just an accommodation within the 21-story majestic looking 3-star hotel.
Within, it was a studio room enough just for 4 residence.
She has 3 other room-mates.
Home is only home, when a building houses a family together. Hence, house for home.
There is no house, nor home here.
The room was all hers, as the room-mates went home respectively during the weekends.
As her only audience and someone to listen to, she turned on the TV.
Immersing in those 'give-me-a-break' love dramas and movies.
One after another.
If there were to be a description of her belief system, here is one :
To her superbly well-informed knowledge, there ain't any Prince Charming that doesn't carry a prickly rose around, asking for the right one's hand.
And the unforeseen price to pay, is to be pricked by the love he has handed over.
Such is life.
Never a thing too good, or too bad.
Silence soared and spoke the loudest.
It seemed that the woman sound lonely, and not.
The quiet external is just background to the rustling and fumbling internal.
Throughout the years, time has provided different constituent feelings to missing.
Her faraway partner.
Her not-so-faraway daughter.
Both were equally estranged.
Growing up in a family that drilled kids to work for financial support has probably genetically altered her sinew.
Tough and harshness take place of resilience.
Holes are tried to be mend through filling money over the cavity.
Things were pretty complicated and tangled inside there, ain't they ?
It is always better to tune to the TV, and to things that do not make sense.
After all, what does ?
The woman, and the TV.
Unexpressed love, unspoken truth from deep heart's core, unseen wounds - Everything cease to exist when non-sense actually means literal.
No sense - blockage of all five senses.
Blockage from everything.
The woman, and the TV.
Rendered mute, I dedicate this to another woman who has selective mutism when it comes to expressing and sharing of love.
Life is hard. And TV is not a solution.
At the end of the day, love is. And love always wins.
