The glazed surface of the bowl threatens to slip from under his fingers. He catches it, fingertips firm through the shimmer of expensive soaps. The boy that would have let it fall, let it shatter on the floor is gone to the twists and turns of history. Only a shadow remains, forever alien wherever it chooses to go. Even if it is the recess of his own mind. Unwelcome. Scrutinized. If he could, Khalid would not suffer this infirm shade to live. Shallow thoughts, just like the water in the sink. It does not do, to dwell on feelings of a caged thing.
Clean surface of the bowl reflects a man of pleasant looks and pleasant expression. The thought of parading that ugly thing threatens to change the easygoing reflection to a sneer. No. He’ll find the thread that pulled on these ugly, inept limbs, and cut it. No tug of a puppeteer must reach this wounded thing, no one can know it. The moment he slips its secrets into someone else’s sleeve, he is as good as dead.
This ugly thing is afraid, wretchedly and surely as the mountains and seas his legs have crossed while fleeing, its whimpers in his heart and ears. He clutches onto the rage buried over years into the thought and strangles its cries with cold flames.