Love Me, Mikayla

VIII

MIKAYLA

. . .

"Soniye, you're so talented," I hear the soft voice of my nephew say as he sits beside me and watches me sketching a face.

I hum, my squinted eyes focused on the canvas. The face of a man is what I am sketching, not wishing to put on many shades. It is actually my nephew's homework and I am doing it.

"How do you do that?" He asks after a pause. I hear the sound of a wrapper being torn.

The silence in my room is too much. So much so that the sound of graphite rubbing against the rough sheet can be heard easily. I like it.

"I dunno," the words come out under my breath, barely audible.

He giggles and swiftly brings the piece of chocolate to my mouth. I don't deny having it silently. The solid bar melts on my tongue, taste fusing into my calm senses and it crawls down my throat.

"I want to sketch like you. Can I do it?"

"Why do you ask me? Ask your Uncle. After all, he's your teacher."

"Uncle said you get jealous!"

He burst into laughter as he held his stomach. My hand halts upon the white surface, the exhausted tip lingering over it, and I give him a stink eye. He goes ten steps back, still laughing. How beautiful it is to notice that he doesn't want to come under my hand. He wants better.

"Your Uncle doesn't know me," I scrunch my nose, going back to my work.

The face before my tranquil mind is enmeshed among the free and light, black and gray threads put together through the loose movements of my fingers.

"He said," Oh, I am all ears, "that you look cute when you do that."

Wrinkled skin and pale eyes, I kept my grandfather before my blank stare and tangled sanity. Touching the skin scrupulously and the blossoming of emotions despite the dullness of the eyes, if I could fill all through this pencil. I have always desired to do that and the zeal made me sketch this way.

The way everybody admires.

"Do what?"

"This." He attains my attention as I watch him scrunching his nose but he does it funnily, teasing me. Cute.

"Not like this..." I trail off, rolling my eyes, "My way is indeed pretty, unlike you. You know how you did that? Like a dog which is about to sneeze."

At my words, his jaws drop. Shocked, he stands. On his knees, on my bed, his chocolate bar is in his hand. Now it's my turn to laugh. He watches me silently, a pout on his lips.

Aww, how cute he looks!

"Bua ji."

"What?"

"You're making fun of me," like I didn't know, "You don't know but girls hover around me in school. I'm a celebrity." In the end, he flips his hair.

Acha?

I roll my eyes, mimicking the last line he said.

But can't ignore what he said. No doubt he is cute and will surely become attractive once he grows up. Girls do hover around him and will continue to hover around him. Wish he wouldn't break hearts like his uncle.

His father is the firstborn of a man who used to be a golden boy in his youth, a handsome professor when he got married, and still looks young and attractive enough to be compared with Moses in appearance. Moses might have looked this way at that time who knows.