The Silence of the Spirits. Wilfried N'Sondé

cheap perfume. This universe pleased and comforted me. Seduced, I kept taking her in, her pale face and red hair highlighted with gray strands.

      The base of her nostrils was red and irritated, left over from a bad cold. I noticed creases at the corners of her eyes. Christelle’s melancholic features moved me, and I was surprised by my reaction. She enveloped me in a whole new feeling, full of sensitivity and kindness.

      I looked at her delicate hands, the skin worn from work, but their wrinkles had not made them ugly. Some of her fingers gripped the collar of her coat, and the others held on to her scarf. Melancholy suited her somehow. She was sitting gracefully in her seat, in a way that I had rarely seen in my turbulent life. In her sleepiness, her lips somewhat pursed, she was undoubtedly trying to dismiss, at least for a while, the boredom and lassitude that accompanied her everyday life. She was so amazing to me that I forgot my own fears and began to dream.

      Christelle inspired words I had never known, inaudible exchanges between couples I saw walking through the city at the end of the day, hand in hand, immersed in a passionate discussion. I envied them especially when they were kissing. Secretly, I admired the women laughing their hearts out, throwing their heads back while in the arms of their beloved. Her lover passes his hand through her hair, they look each other intensely in the eyes, a quick, gentle kiss, she rests her head delicately on his shoulder.

      I have always experienced happiness as a spectator, like one who intrudes on its beauty, a poor ignorant bastard. I was never the good friend, invited home to dinner, or the guy you presented to your mother.

      After several stations, as we sat there alone in front of each other in a one-of-a-kind face-to-face, the silhouettes of two uniformed police officers appeared at the back of the car. Brutally jolted from my dream, I suddenly returned to my skin as the absent one, illegal, the monster who frightens, the villainous beast no one wants to resemble. Consumed by the fear of an uncertain future, I was suddenly overcome by a violent urge to scream out the rage lurking deep within me.

      I wanted to plead humbly with arms outstretched to the sky. I repressed my cry; fear suffocated my desire. Resigned, sadness flooded my eyes, and in the end I just lowered them.

      When I raised my eyes a few seconds later, Christelle timidly reached out and touched my leg with her fingers and smiled!