Two incidences in the past weeks that made K feel like a Mimosa plant. She shuttled between her moments that had made her feel like a lesser mortal and crouch into a shell that banned every human, every touch and every thought.
~
K walked in a hurriedly over the bridge that was supposed to flow sweet water - which had now turned into a gutter of sorts. Her mind raced through everything that this bridge and the park was supposed to mean and what it now meant. She felt her jaws clench in a thought of the flaming tree that had gone missing years ago and that she had done nothing to save it.
She walked through only to bump into a friendly neighborhood grand father who makes her day by cracking inane 'old-man's' jokes. She laughed with him for a few seconds till his accomplice walked along and she was asked to touch his feet in respect. Politely as K bent, she felt the man's palm on her back, pressed through the cotton garment. He had felt-up her brassiere belt, she wanted the steel hooks to melt into his fingers and leave a mark that he'd have to explain every time he held them in his face. Startled, K looked up straight into his eyes with a fury of an abused child questing "Why?, why did you have to do it?" The man's eyes caught her and he sneered in a distasteful way. A way that lost youth looks at young love - with hateful lust. There was anger for his obscenity and for my youth. Grandpa had not noticed, he was busy chatting with an old woman who had just begun her walks and felt the test of her age and fatigue.
Something struck in her. K with out a word walked back home. The thought of being late for work and the that things more urgent awaited her presence, she just walked thoughtlessly, strolled into her house and walked into the bathroom. Her mother was questioning from the drawing room, she heard sounds - not speech. The water trickled down her body, hot, holy water. She needed to clean her body of that touch, she needed to wash it out of her mind. She had to head to work and with a clear head.
