ashishkumarsingh nailpolish

Desire was quieten by the unwanted shame and the nail polish I bought stayed for another week beneath the school books. The woman selling them looked at me as if I hadn’t asked for a product but stood soliciting sex like young girls on Red Road do. When she asked for what, I lied and said, it’s my sister’s birthday. Though I would have liked to try all the shades to see which suits my fingers the most, like my mother does each brushstroke carefully measured, I did not. In the end, I went for the red that shined with star glitters. My sister, if she were to see it, would’ve called it gaudy, red being the color that screams desperation. When walking all the way home, the bottle felt cold against the palm in the pocket of my trousers and guilt hot like the barrel of a gun pressed against the lungs. Weeks passed and it remained hidden like a stolen property until yesterday when I skipped school, settled in a corner of a park so far away it took almost an hour to get there. Tell me, what is the most daring thing a boy of 14 can do if not this stealing a moment to try to be someone else. I opened the bottle and the smell of my mother getting ready tingled my nose, her one hand extended towards me as I held a different bottle of the same colour, ready to show her the artist in me while the other near her maroon lips, blowing them to dry. I laid down, my ten digits spread on the green grass like ten red ladybirds, my face getting kissed in blotches by the afternoon sun. When getting late, I hurried, left myself asleep on the ground and like an exile finally returned home.