Cherry Lips …
This is a story with many meanings, all of them intertwined; but I won’t spell it out for you.
So there we were, the fourth night in two weeks with a solitary purpose, have fun. With a growing desire for a real distraction and dressed to the nines, we headed out after a party. After several hours of dancing, I blended into the atmosphere; vanished into the music, and was lost.
I went to the bar to get another drink, I turned, and I caught your eye. You were standing there and for a moment time paused, the crowd swimming around us. I watched as you made your way to the bar, pushing people out of the way as you went. You reached the bar and slide next to me, you turned, and we locked eyes. You were Megan and I was Craig, and for a moment I was lost forever. Your shoulder length brown hair, your cherry red lips and mesmerising eyes. I was caught by your smile, and for a moment I was more alive than I had felt in a while. Our friends met, and we followed your invitation to the dance floor. We turned, placed our drinks down, and you were gone.
I tried to find you. I never could.
Later that night, I received a call from a friend; she was scared of the way her boyfriend was acting. I met up with them, and ended up walking him to the Taxi line to send him home. On the way to the Taxi, he was assaulted from behind, a punch to the back of the head; unsuspecting, he went down and hit the concrete. Pure random violence. Luckily he did not lose consciousness, let alone die. He was loaded into an ambulance with head trauma, and left for the hospital with his girlfriend. My friend and I followed tail in a Taxi. We sat in the waiting room of the Emergency ward for two hours until we felt comfortable leaving (later we found out he needed surgery and three metal plates inserted).
We sat on the bench outside the hospital as we waited for separate Taxi’s to take us home. The sun was rising on a very early Saturday. The smell of a fresh morning was in the air, tainted with hope and opportunity. I turned and asked if you were just a hallucination. You weren’t. Yet there I was, in the midst of a violent, unpleasant morning, sitting on a bench with a warm smile on my face, with your cherry red lips and gorgeous smile on my mind. Looking forward to the new day that awaited.