Why?

I took the lid off the nail polish bottle and let two droplets fall on my sanitary pad. I waited for a couple of minutes then I called him and asked for tissue paper.
He walked in, handed me the napkins with a smile and left, not noticing the fake red spots I had made.

Who am I kidding? When and why did I start lying to myself and to him?
Perhaps because this was the last proof of my womanhood, and it has already started to elude me.

I ought to face the ugly truth: my body is now drier than the Sahara Desert.
I’m no longer that young girl with chemicals streaming down her veins. I’m an old woman trapped most of the times in an oven-like body.

I confront my mirror reflection and sigh. My legs can be mistaken for the surface of the moon, and a mosquito landing on one of my “craters” can become the Neil Armstrong of its species. My belly arrives two minutes earlier than me. And my face needs that magical steam machine at the dry cleaner’s which gets rid of all the wrinkles.

Why does he keep on loving me?
I couldn’t even do what any woman – asleep, awake, willingly or unwillingly – can do.
I couldn’t make him a father. I couldn’t bear a child.
My womb is just an empty storage room with lifeless walls. It was, is and will always be effete.

Why am I still his world? The reason behind his smile? His best friend? His backbone?

To all my questions, he always has the same answer:
“Because even time doesn’t have the power to end a love which cannot be explained.”