WOMAN

The morns are meeker than they were - 

The nuts are getting brown -

The berry’s cheek is plumper -

The rose is out of town.

  The morns are meeker than they were, Verse 1, by Emily Dickinson

There are a great many things that you wish for, but once in a while, on one of those days, you really don’t want that morning. When you crack open your tired eyelids only the sun and the crusty lorry on the road outside seem to be bellowing with laughter. Big heaves: the former blistering hot, the latter, smoky black.

It isn’t till close to mid day, when you play a random video forward on your phone while waiting for your coffee to fill in the office cafeteria, that you smile. The real one, not the bland, social one usually reserved for others. You don’t want anyone to know that your favourite search phrase on YouTube is “laughing baby”. 

Your head hurts from the vodka of the previous night, but you suspect it has more to do with the unbearably forced conversation rather than an excess of alcohol. You laughed at their jokes once, especially the risqué ones. Ten years ago, as a curious, lusty, just-turned twenty, you had liked that they could be indecent and you could too, without actually saying it. You had been looking forward to a wonderfully flowing, cosy evening of good food, moderate drink, and lots and lots of laughter. Maybe that was where you went wrong - men are rarely known to grow up, and that’s why you have always been thankful that you didn’t know your husband when he was a teenager. 

Some hyperactive HR female has decided that the easiest way to meet her quarterly KRA, namely ‘employee productivity’, is to get the women to spend less time looking at themselves in the mirror in the toilets. Hence the poster - “THE SEXIEST CURVE ON YOUR BODY IS YOUR SMILE. FLAUNT IT!” Capitals written in pristine white, sans serif type, against a crimson red background, pasted strategically next to the mirror, a little above your eye level. You think then, that the men’s loo should have “THE SEXIEST SERVE IN YOU IS YOUR RESERVE. SO SHUT IT!’ But not near the mirror, please. 

You flash yellowish teeth at your dull reflection and remember a time. The only time, in fact, your mother called you “beautiful”. You might have been secretly smiling to yourself then, because at the rosebud age of sixteen, your long time crush had finally proposed, elevating you to that of a girlfriend. Since the precious deed had been done on a Saturday evening, and the motherly compliment was delivered to you the following morning, you had had to wait a whole day (and night) before breaking the news to friends at school. Of the proposal of course. The compliment had felt comparatively duh then.

You also used to be called “Miss Smiley” by friends, after your ready smile and engaging conversation. You loved to laugh. Not the trilling, musical, girly variety. The open-mouthed, full throated, belly rolling HaHaHa! You still have a child in you, your favourite professor at college had said, as ‘constructive feedback’ on why your masters application could have fallen through. 

Grown ups are serious, responsible people. So you grew a crust, rounded out, became measured. You massage your throbbing temples with your hands. Surreptitiously. Grown ups show cracks only at certain times of the day. Your phone pings and you see that the jokes of the previous night have received a fillip, for the worse. Grown up women showing cracks? Hardly ever. 

The brain fog lifts at around five in the evening, when the interminable day also settles into its downward curve. Heels clack, bags are rustled, phone calls are made. What the … ? “Women Only on Wednesday! Gastro Pub, 8pm onwards” screams the mailer in your inbox. They really need to stop using red. 

The prospect of driving in horrendous evening traffic, going home, changing, and then shimmying into an Uber to the ‘party’ in question wrings a grunt out of you. You rest your forehead on your worktable, the cool surface soothing your hot skin somewhat, spurring thoughts into action.

When you lift your sapped out, warm head a few moments later, you send two messages. To the husband, because it was Wednesday, and to the girlfriend in whose name yesterday’s ruckus was created, to meet at the coffee shop next to Gastro for a tete-a-tete. 

Would you have preferred to have remained blemish-less? You had always assumed that mistakes, heartbreaks, low GPAs, silent rejections, broken relationships and missed promotions were part of every young adult-to-jaded adult trek. It’s easier to rail against the system, against yourself, rather than to do something about it. Another secret added to the List, right after “laughing baby”. For once you are relieved to be tired, because your mind does not rattle off all the things you should have done, didn’t do, cannot do; an exercise that you realise, in its absence, you have conducted for as long as you can remember. 

Another trip to the toilet to freshen up, and you wonder what happened to your laugh. If you tried, would it still be as fulsome? You rub your rounded belly thoughtfully. It growls back in response. This time in the mirror, you shrug at yourself and smile. What’s precious porcelain without the cracks from use, the chipped edges that mark your cup as singularly yours? You have what you have, and you are what you are. There’s no getting around it. You hunt in your perpetually expanding handbag, roll on some red lipstick, and mascara your lashes. First things first - food. 

The maple wears a gayer scarf -

The field a scarlet gown -

Lest I sh'd be old-fashioned 

I’ll put a trinket on. 

The morns are meeker than they were, Final Verse, by Emily Dickinson