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The girl on the boat

published: 2009-05-24

There was this girl today, or should I say woman? She sat at the very tip of the boat she was on, straddled it. One leg on each side. Her posture demanded attention: back upright, pelvis tipping forward slightly. Her head was cocked to one side, her ashblonde hair in a messy ponytail. Both defiant and pleading. With her left foot, she rhythmically kicked the passing water.
There were two boys, or should I say men? They were at the other end, separated from the girl by the full length of the boat. Yet locked in it together by the surrounding water. It was as if her foot kicked the water to say, “I am not stuck here, with them, not if I don’t want to be.” Was she intending to console herself? Or warn them? It wouldn’t have taken any effort for them to see her. All they needed to do was look where they were going. But they didn’t. They were listening to each other, had fixed their gazes on something irrelevant in the boat. If I were to have drawn a line from their eyes to what they were looking at, the lines would’ve crossed and stopped midway between them and her. I waved at her. Perhaps she’d swim to me. Instead she waved back, wildly and generously.






5 Responses to “The girl on the boat”

  1. Sandeep Bahadur says:

    I guess there are two types of writers. The one kind sees the world in pity, the other with envy. I’m not sure which kind of writer you are.

  2. alief says:

    @Sandeep Aren’t there are as many types of writers as there are readers? I hope to leave it at ‘seeing’. So that you can decide how you would see what I’m seeing: in pity or in envy, in sentimentaility or in disillusion, in hatred or in passion. That part is defined by you.

  3. T says:

    The readers in this room are all seeing readers. They all left my desk after reading your piece singing “Mr. Lova, lova, hmmmmmmm”.
    Was it meant to sexy? Or are we just a pubescent bunch?

  4. alief says:

    @T I don’t know that song, but suddenly, what I wrote turns out to be sexy. Indeed.

  5. T says:

    @Alief Of course you do, Mr Bombastic by Shaggy.

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