“Bambi”

Dance like you mean it! (Photo courtesy: Leon JL, Unsplash)

Bambi stands at the window and gazes outside. It’s a hot March evening and her terrace, singed by the sun all day, gives off barren heat when the cool evening breeze touches it. Bambi stares at the rising moon. It’s almost full, ebullient, stained yellow earlier in the evening, now pearly white, it fills her with a strange calm. She decides to pace her terrace and wants to gaze at her skin in the silver light. White light shimmers on her ebony skin, deeply marked by the sun recently. She finds a strange beauty in it. She recalls the cartoon she saw on television— Bambi, she thinks fondly, and her face wears a half-smile. She has always been fond of that cartoon figure, its brown fur glinting amber at times, a burnt terracotta in others, playful, innocent, ever curious eyes. She tries to pace the terrace light-footed, meandering her waist, a ballet for the moon she loves, her hair windswept, the breeze coaxing the softness of her skin. 

Prince comes and stands on the terrace after a day of work. She calls him that because his effortless, regal demeanor amuses her these days. He is of middling height, his skin porcelain, his blue veins sticking out ungainly. The moon doesn’t bounce off his skin, it seeps right through. Prince comes to where she is on the terrace. You might as well walk, Bambi. You have been sitting the whole day at your laptop. You’re right about this analogy you know, Bambi, I mean, you have always had awkward posture, and now with your legs sticking out weirdly under that hanging paunch, you look more and more like an elephant and less and less like a doe. Why do you call yourself that? You were never that. He smirks. Bambi can’t help but smile. She knows his secret.

Bambi hugs the soft animal of her body, her skin dreaming of love, lately she has found promise across the hills and she looks at the skies that could take her there. Prince continues, walk faster, can’t you? Your body needs exercise, you’re spilling. Bambi nods and twirls and smiles at him, the moon and the wind make her giddy. She thinks of the man in the hills and smiles secretively. He will come again she knows. His strength fills her being, she feels lighter, almost dainty in his presence. She asks Prince to look at the moon. He looks at it and says, you should take care of yourself, you know, you’ll grow older in no time, forty is a tricky age. Bambi doesn’t feel forty. She has never felt her age. She has led her life thinking of it as a giant blackboard, each incident wiped out clean with a sponge duster, just like she used to do in school after each class. Each day is a new start.

She pities Prince sometimes. She knows he is a bully. She cannot find enough coins in that well of love she had in her heart all those years ago. She knows he hides behind her, that his skin glows fairer against her darkness, didn’t he tell her so many years ago that he was drawn to darkness? She didn’t think he meant it literally back then. When she watches him pull weights and hang from rods and gaze at himself in the mirror and then look at her with a certain distaste, she feels a curious protective numbness stealing on her skin. She knows enough now not to take his words seriously. She feels pity as she looks at him now. The evening is so beautiful, she says, can’t we just pace the terrace and drink tea? Can you not be critical of me now? He tells her something about balance, how she has enough love from others to balance his criticism. She gets her blackboard ready.

Bambi moves to the kitchen and pours herself the tea she made with peppercorns, acrid heat coursing through her tongue. She thinks she would like to rub that heat on her arms to feel something. She recalls how in one of the scenes Bambi skidded across ice, its limbs moving awkwardly. Bambi decides to dance in the moonlight. She sways with the cup of tea in her hand, some of it splashing onto her white dress. Prince is about to say something about her clumsiness when she shimmies away to the corner of the roof right where a few jasmines have bloomed. She smells their soft white petals and twirls faster, the tea falling freely from the cup onto the terrace. Prince protests and calls her mad. She smiles at him and sways at the moonlight, her own white dress with lace sleeves mingling with the beams. She imagines stairs on the moonbeam and decides to take them to the hills. Bambi skids on ice, light as a feather, light bouncing off her ebony body. She jumps and lands lightly on her feet, like the figure inside her head, her face giddy. Bambi will dance, while she can.

MadSwirl, July 2025

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