ON A RIVER

ON A RIVER

By Darcy Prince (Knowledge Variable)

I clambered to the boat, as it rocked due to me standing, I’m trying to get my packet of smokes out of my pocket. As I sat, her face glistened suavely, I could see her painting on the river bank. Like a lonely heart walking in the rain, along the boulevard. The sun’s beams dimly lit her body, and volumes of luminous beauty shined in ease. My lips parted due to me being pulled back in awe. I light my cigarette and sat in silence. Whispering to myself, that I didn’t want to die now, what’s the point when it comes to discovering potential to fall in love. I questioned whether it’s only lust. For a man, it’s always in confliction.

As a moth or a butterfly flew past her face, she brushed it away and in the process of it, she caught me looking over in awe. I instantly became embarrassed about being caught and became frantic in my stupidity, standing up and falling backwards into the clear river. Rising my head above the blank top, I saw her giggle, I forgot the boat and my reason for being there and I swam over to where she sat.

Drenched and soaked, standing on the grass as the ducks run off from my presence. I looked as she struggled to contain her laughter. “Is everything okay?” She asked.

“Not at the moment.” I wiped my face when I answered.

She walks over to me, placing her hands on my shoulders. “Here, please sir, have my seat.”

“No, that’s okay. I wish not to disturb you painting.”

“I think that has been established.” She turns behind. “Oh your boat.”

I turn around. “Don’t worry about.”

“But it will float down the soft stream.”

I brush it off. “It’s my brothers.” I sit down, regretting about the boat already. It’s not my brothers. “I’m Matthew.” Looking up to her, in her white dress.

“I'm Katrina.” She brushed back her black hair and gleans her blue eyes into mine.

This isn’t fate. But I am hopeless when it comes to my romance. “I haven’t seen you here before.”

“I’m new to the area.”

“Dutch?”

“No, South African.” She answered.

I’m sure there’s something insidious about this moment in reality. Show and never to touch, knowing my personal history. I glance over her painting, she had only started. “What’s you painting?”

“Just a man, a boat and the river.”

I do not see anyone in the river. “Who were you painting, I can’t see anyone.”

Slapping my arm. “You - funny.”

“I see. But your back was turned?”

“It’s how I paint.” Sitting on the ground in front. I stand to move away from the seat. Putting her hand on my knee. “No, please you’re soaking wet.”

Whistling for the day. The desolate lake stood still, because no-one now is using it, other than koi. We sat and we talked. Passing small and mundane details on one another. It staggered soon after we started and I instantly assumed it’s going to flake and no reason to make any effort to pursue anything. We stood, I offered to help take her painting and her supplies to her car, the offer got declined.

Days later, I’m not to what I am before meeting her, a simple stranger. I went back to the same point at the river, my front was to fish. I am keeping hold of the thought, it isn’t going to lead anywhere, no-matter how frightening that is. Poetry has taught me to believe in that true love exists. No all poetry could be a written form or forms of lies. I pretend to fish, I wrote down poetry on my spiral notepad, always looking up to the same spot. So far, either tourists or families occupy the spot. It’s funny, when I’m going through the crush period, I feel conflicted despair, yet fully in hopes. Passionate and something to stab, so I can bleed to death, as I wrote any notes or poetry, I’ll drift into and out of consciousness to what my hands are doing, my yearning feelings and any koi fishing. Anguish and dissolution. Violent emotions. Trancing, calming, certain beyond reality, going into mythological worlds. Behind the curtains of twilight. Where the muses go when they die. I ended up writing not on love, but the Deaths other kingdoms.

I row the boat back to the back of the house, stupo and dampered sadness. Feeling it has come to an end. Life is now static and questioned what’s the point of putting in effort into anything.

At home, my flatmate Johnny, fast talker-junkie, obsessed with the avant garde jazz, always in wearing shades, inside or out. Storming into my room, twirling a smoke in between his fingers. “Did you see that chick again?”

Sitting on my bed, leaning against the wall, with my Walt Whitlam book. “No. Not today.”

“She’s becoming an enigma of your mind mate. An enigma. Do what you normally do, write poetry, just writing poetry.” Lighting his smoke. “I’m going to get some magic, you want some. You want some?” Asking me twice.

“No man, you know I don’t smoke well.” Gesturing for a smoke. My love life, unreplenished and not garnished in alluring seduction to evoke people to ask me about. It’s a result of a life of heavy-barren routine, with strong-inner meaning to get as much work done. Bodies of work, before I die. Failing in lacking of knowing other people. After all that, I only know myself.

Jonny taking off his rock and roll jacket. “I can always wait there for you, text when she comes around.”

I look to my wall, covered in books. “Yeah, I’ve missed out on a good ten days of work.” Looking over. “You remember where I told you, where I first saw her?”

“Near that one oak tree.”

I smell that one scent. A smell that needs no flowers. I want to walk through a labyrinth of life. If I die today before knowing love, fuck it, I wrote a poem with Mary J. Blige. Whether I’ll become inhuman after I cross over to that other side. Transcendent into something else. Not as a form of a muse. And it’s isn;t the result of the bitterness I developed, through a painstakingly knowledge learning of the occult in underground societies. It will be almost one whole month before Katrina came back to that same spot. Like Johnny promised, texting me on arrival. I did use the boat, I ran for the gold along the hot, sun sinking in road. I ran to her.

With her arms out. “Tom, we meet again.”

I didn’t instantly reply. I took in her presence and the fact I had waited for so long. And anything poetic ran through my third eye. Reaching into my pocket and wanting to hand her a few poems I had wrote for this occasion. “I wrote these for you.”

She smiles. “I would take them, but my husband won’t like it.”