Black and White
Tags: Writing, Black And White, Life, Hope, Reality

Black and White.

New day, new start, new beginning they say.

Bullshit.

As I lay there in my bed and watched my fan spin, it spun so slow that it never really did cool the room. All it did, I guess, was make a sound that rocks me to sleep on otherwise sleepless nights.

I lay there and I knew each and everything that was gonna happen that day. I knew it ’cause it was something that didn’t change over the course of the last few years. And I didn’t see it changing for the foreseeable future.

Disgruntled, I made my way to the first part of my day. The cafe below my apartment. Sat in my usual seat and the waiter came and kept my order, something that hadn’t changed over the past year. Pitch black coffee and a pack of cigarettes as I watched the busy street.

I don’t know why I watched that street every day. Maybe somewhere there was a glimmer of hope, that something would happen on that street that would surprise me, that would make my eyes pop out and make me jump off my seat. But nothing of that sort today as well.

I hoped, for a splash of color in my monochrome life.

As I put out the third cigarette into the empty coffee cup and lit the fourth I realized how everything fails to surprise me now. I wonder when it was that the color got sucked out of my life and all that was left was black and white. I looked up and even the sky was a shade of black and white.

They say, love, adds colors to your life that you have never seen before.

What a load of crap.

What is love in this day, if not a lie told in the most beautiful way?

All any of you do is lie and hide behind a million different masks. So if anyone does like you, it’s not you that they like but the mask you showed them.

Let me see you put it all out, your true self, your deepest and darkest desires, your guilty pleasures, and the things you don’t talk to anyone about. Then, then let me see who calls you the love of their life.

This world is a very fucked up one, they raise the idea of sex to unimaginable heights and bring it down to trash as well. The hunger for it has gone to such an extreme that it makes me realize that we humans are animals after all. So I chased for it, just like everyone else to find what light hid behind that door. And I did it all, made a mask, held it in my hand in front of me, hid my own face, and made people fall in love with it. All of this, just to get down to it.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that there wasn’t much to it. The door I had chased for so long, held the same black and white scenery I had grown accustomed to. All of that effort seemed to be for naught. I don’t know how many bedsides I have sat at, felt disconnected, and all that tethered me to this world was my cigarette.

My chain of thought and my time at that cafe came to an end as my last cigarette burned out. Got up, paid my bill, and checked my watch as I had to be somewhere. It was my niece’s fifth birthday and my sister had emotionally blackmailed me into coming as I’d missed her last two birthdays.

I spent the entire party like a fly on the wall. I always found peace in being obscure. My peace was broken when my niece came stomping towards me with her cheeks blown up into two balloons, I think she was trying to show that she was angry.

“Why didn’t you come to my last two parties?” She asked with her arms on her hips. It took a second for me to collect myself and as I opened my mouth to give the lamest excuse possible, she cut me off and said “I know you are very busy with your stupid job and all”.

She put her hand on her mouth shocked and ran away to hide. I guess the word “stupid” was taboo in the house.

The party got over and I was about to leave when my sister pulled me aside and asked me to take care of my niece for a bit. Her office had just called her in for an emergency. Didn’t seem like I had an option.

I watched as my niece enthusiastically opened up her birthday presents and paraded it in front of me. Her next present was a paint set with a lot of colors. She came, sat on my lap, and started painting.

She showed me all her colors and said “ Look mama, I got sooo many colors”.

To which I said “Why does it matter? It’s all just a shade of black and white”

She kept painting and said, “So what? Even if you have only two colors you can mix them in so many different ways to make so many different colors”.

I looked at her for a second and put out my cigarette.

She went on “One day, I want to travel the whooole world and see aaaall the beautiful colors in the world”, and made the biggest circles she could make with her tiny arms.

I looked at her and smiled, after a very long time I smiled as I saw her eyes twinkle with the thought of a thousand colors.

I saw the small streaks of color on her cheek, the cute yellow bandana that she wore with her red frock.

And as I looked up at the sky,