The boy I pass every morning on my way to work/ If he would speak

- Varsha Upraity

I could kill the ice-cream man. I would enter his house and raid his kitchen. Eat drink smoke all the flavours in his fridge. Coffee Jamaican Vanilla Choco-butter. I don’t like strawberry. Rumraisin Cranberry Butterscotch. I take it all in till I throw up and take in some more. When I am drunk with it, I walk up the stairs to his bed, drag him out, and tie him up out in the garden.

I would take out the nails from his hand and legs and run hot tongs through the soft skin. Maybe run it through his organ.

If it was a girl, I would just stick it up her.

Everyday they walk. Up and down the street. They have their shoes, their short skirts, their bleached-dyed hair, their gadgets. They hold their computers, their wallets, their lives in their bags. The street is full of restaurants. Chinese Thai German Bakery Israeli Hookah Bars Tibetan. Icecream Parlours.

I see them, from outside the glass window panes of their lives. They eat with cutlery. Spoons for soups. Knife and Fork for everything else. Sometimes those two long fingers for noodles. And ice-cream for dessert. They have them with sauces and nuts and fruits on transluscent bowls with stands and tiny spoons. Mostly though, they have them on cones. Crisp, chocolate coated. The perfect two mounds over the slanted V, the shape of an imperfect heart. They go slow at first. Licking the tops, making sure nothing spilt over, creating a perfect circle before the first bite. And afterwards, just deeper and deeper, bite and lick till the tip. The perfect end to a wonderful afternoon out.

They walk out once they are done with the food. They usually have dessert on the way to their cars or while waiting for a taxi. They eat on the road. That is disgusting. To leave air conditioning for a road people piss on. This is when I have to go up to them.

Please give me money-

Motherfuck you

I’m very hungry, I haven’t eaten in two days-

You’ll get some back home,

Come on, share the love woman.

I’m ill, you’ve just eaten, please, please-

It’s your leftovers now or sifting through your shit later in the garbage, you selfish cunts. Pretend you care.

Sometimes, often, I don’t talk. I twist a leg, maul my arm, roll my tongue, smudge more shit over me. Reach out an arm through the glass taxi window, pull at a skirt, throw myself low enough to lick a shoe. If I am careful and good, I get some coins, rarely, some notes. These I keep carefully under my tongue, so I can change them for glue. Otherwise, all I usually get is a bitten cone of melting ice-cream.

It is very hot right now. Inside, people are eating steaming soups and smoking imported cigarettes. I don’t have money to smoke in summer. If it stays this hot, they are sure to want ice-cream. I am not going to get anything halfway decent.

There was one day, some months ago, I don’t remember when exactly. It was the late night-time. It was cooler. I think it must have been January, it was cold. I was outside the Italian restaurant. This tall man came out, with an ice-cream cone in his hand. He had just started to have it, I could tell. He hadn’t started smoothing it out yet. He had already had a huge dinner- soup salad meat and all- I saw him.

Please give me some food.

He stopped and turned to look at me. He was very tall, I must have reached his hip. I am quite small, but I will grow more. I don’t think I have stopped yet.

Some food. Some money. Please. I am hungry.

He had no hair on his head, only a beard. I wonder if he was a dopehead. If he knew I was lying and cold and needed to sniff.

Are you hungry?

They normally don’t talk. They want you as part of the street, like the bricks and the dogs. I nod. He beckons. I follow. He doesn’t say anymore.

He takes me to the third floor of one of the hotels further up the street. His room has his bags all over it. There is no dope. He has no computer but there is a camera. I don’t see a wallet.

He uses the phone. His ice-cream, still hardly eaten, he leaves standing on a glass, and goes out, locking me in. Sometime later, the door opens, and he enters with a serving man from the hotel, who has a tray of food.

I have never eaten from a plate. That was the only time. There are leaves and plastic bags, and sometimes paper cups, but they don’t last very longs The ones in the garbage are always broken into very small pieces and cannot be used.

I ate. I must have eaten a lot. I don’t know what exactly, but there was some red hot soup, some meat and green peas and potatoes, and some cold white carrot. It tasted strange, it smelt hot and cold. It made me tired. I felt sick.

I slept off for a bit. He put me on the bed and took off my pants. I think I dreamt or the food made me sick. I am not used to eating. I had a strange taste in my mouth. I kept moving, and was finally too tired to keep my eyes closed.

I woke up and he was out. I couldn’t see anything I could take from the room. I was still looking when he came back.

I’ve paid for your meal. Now go.

I left. I didn’t say anything. I was walking to the door, when he ran his hand through my head. I shuddered and turned to face him. He gave me his ice-cream cone.

There’s some left. You didn’t have anything sweet earlier. Take this.

It was the colour of his tongue. I didn’t want it, but I took it. He patted my head again and walked me down the stairs and out the door. I held the cone in my right hand. It began to drip, and the cone started to melt into my hand.

What? Don’t you like ice-cream. It’s life. Lick it before it melts.

I touched it with my tongue. Strawberry. Pink is a girl’s colour. I couldn’t tell him that.

He didn’t follow me once we were outside the hotel. I walked alone and turned at the corner. He wasn’t there, he had gone back inside.

I threw the cone on the floor. The pink oozed out of the orange and into the black. The sky would be that colour soon. It wasn’t there when I came back in the afternoon. A dog must have eaten it. I never saw him again.

A woman comes out, her black heels clicking to the rhythm of her swaying straight skirt.

Money. Please. Money

Come on sister. Give me some.

She looks at me. Her eyes are behind massive black glasses. I can’t see them. She wears no lipstick. I cannot see her bra-strap. The slut isn’t game.

She opens her bag and shoves an apple into my hand.

If I give you money, you will sniff glue with it right? Eat this.

She walks off. I wonder how she knows.

I look at the apple in my hand. It is red and shiny.

I bite it.

It is sour and crunchy.

The he she person

Pink she saw. The colour the moon takes when the stars want to hide and the night is still infinite. The moments when the universe are suspended to seem like a dream. The moment of the dream before eyes open to the ceiling. That shade of pink, the wisp of dream melted into a moment of unstable permanence.