How is she Balanced?

I keep looking at this photograph wondering how she is doing what she is doing. I mean, look at the muscles in her arms. They’re not any bigger than those in mine and yet, I question whether I would be able to do that.

Have a look and join me afterwards if you’re still feeling like it.

Photo by Chevanon Photography on Pexels.com

We were arguing and so, not wanting to spend a day of my holiday feeling like I did, I exited the room. I wanted to take her with me. I did! But I knew that she wouldn’t go. Not feeling like she did. Not distrusting me like she did. And so I packed my bag and went.

It was a long walk to the place where I wanted to go but I didn’t take the bus. I just walked. It was a self-punishment, I guess. The sea was lovely. The sky was lovely. The people got out of my way when they saw my face and, by and large, time moved on quicker than I thought it would.

I left the road and shore and started to climb up a narrow, dusty, rocky trail that led towards the burning light in the sky. It got hotter. Not, I suppose, because I was getting closer to the sun, but because I was generating heat myself. I don’t sweat much so there was none of that ‘t-shirt sticking to my back and perspiration running down my face’ shtick, but I knew about it all the same.

Luckily, I’d put protection on my skin. Not, as you might be thinking, a giant condom, but something stinky from a bottle. It’d probably gone off, but it did its job. My skin was grateful.

I walked and walked and met no one. I heard whistling at one point, but it was from someone on another path. Nothing interesting happened as I walked.

I stopped to eat sandwiches behind a shady ridge away from the path. Bees buzzed but bothered the flowers instead of me. Cheese sandwiches and crisps. Can’t go wrong.

I walked some more.

Lots of abandoned buildings. A whole village of apartments spread across the hilltop. No one living there apart from a couple, one of each, sitting on rocks, drinking. I peeked at them from around a gutted building. I was afraid that they would see me, but they didn’t. They carried on drinking and getting browner and I carried on walking and getting older. And younger.

An abandoned hotel. Locked up securely. The compound was desolate: empty swimming pool, crumbling outhouses, faded but functional toilets (I can vouch for that) and overgrown shrubbery. I looked at everything but touched nothing. Just moving on and finally, on the other side, climbing over the wall to exit the property. I watched the security arrive from my vantage across the road. They began to unlock the gate so that they could get inside and look for me. I could have spoken to them; could have told them to save their sweat, but I didn’t speak any Maltese. I calculated that nothing good would have come of it if I had. I walked on. And on.

It’s cold here. I turned the thermostat down to 20 degrees when she took her tropical self off to sunnier climes. It’s also dark. I can touch-type (kinda) so there’s no need to put the light on. So I’m sat here in the dark telling myself not to shiver and you why I’m … the way I am. On my own.

And I still don’t know how she’s balancing so well.

I couldn’t do it. I don’t think so.

Could you?