“Exile”
- ritumukherjee10
- Jun 23
- 2 min read
Your feet hang strangely from the soft, well-made bed of that immaculate hotel room. There’s something about the tidiness and quiet luxury of the room that immediately puts you at ease. You open the wardrobe and stare at the microwave, his and hers slippers and bathrobe. You enter the robe, embarking on something new as it were. You are at a conference, your laptop open on the bed, the slides staring at you in bright blues. You keep staring at it and enter the shower and stare through the tasteful bamboo blinds that strip the room into clean lines. You let the hot water run through your jet-lagged body and think of how desperately you need to sleep. But you’re acutely aware of the room across the hall. How does it look, you ask yourself. Is it as large as yours with things just arranged in the opposite direction? You wish it were that simple. For his side of the bed is not alone like yours. He has his partner, while you wander around the room, keenly aware of him, smiling at everyone with even teeth, a well-practiced smile, a mask summoned involuntarily. The warm water almost unknots you. You rub yourself dry, vigorously, hurtfully, brush your shoulder-length hair, sigh at the strands that break and fall on the unusually white basin, gaze at your vacant eyes. The make-up mirror gleams a little too bright, your dark circles pall around the face. You just have an hour to the presentation and desperately want to tuck your feet inside the warm blanket and never make your way out. You won’t be missed anyway. The thought exhausts you, makes you sleepier. Your phone blinks. A familiar face smiles cheekily. The face slides to a message. Careful. Tentative. Checking on you. You are fond of this face. Grown used to its presence. You wonder if you’ll feel lonely without it sliding into your DMs. You know the answer to that. How easy it is to just take this promise of companionship and run away with it, how tempting not to be encased in this unrelenting desire for something that’ll never be. You think of the person on the other side of the message, waiting, expectant, just like you are, and your heart rips slowly, you want to be selfish, desired, to reach out across the nothingness and tell him that your withered heart isn’t capable anymore. And you feel something unclench within and in that curated hotel room with warm yellow lights, loneliness runs free.
Chewers by Masticadors, December 2024
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