Metro Geisha

The storyboard continues in episodes of varying lengths. The brief is brief. Life is death, delayed. A gold class ride on the metro. Standing up when seating is guaranteed. Creative directors and graphic designers wanted. The copy is any body’s guess. Dare to push the limits.

I was not ready for the face. The tight dark jeans tucked in the lace-up 4 inch red leather knee-high boots, the brown bag held tightly around the chest, the slender fingers, ring-less, manicured, corrals, a wooden bangle peeking from under the black sleeve, mismatched, nonchalant. The neck, slightly visible under the turtle neck, white, chalk.

The face. I wasn’t ready for the face, the eyes, half closed, lifeless almost, staring at the void beyond the windows, the metro speeding on the unusually wet tracks of a Dubai morning, wrinkles beyond age, beyond recognition, beyond talk, the face of a geisha, once.

I divert my look, but the face goes with me, burrows its features into mine, until I become one with her. Reincarnated into the lines on her face. What brings us here, strangers, to the point of recognition and silence, at the hour of sleep?