It was just another day. She was woken up by the usual nightmares, of her wandering through the deserted plains alone in the midst of nowhere. She was in rags and had a wooden stick in hand; she had been running for days, in search of him. Soon she couldn’t take it no more and fell on the burning sand, with parched lips, aching legs, hurting heart and lonely self. She wrote a name on the sand, touched it with her shivering finger tips, and just cried to herself, ‘Why wouldn’t you show up? I have done everything you asked me for. I went through all and sighed or whined not once. There were days when I had drowned myself into the oceans of despair, and days when I had given in to temptations, and days when not a single soul could I turn to for help or guidance. Yet, I stayed, I asked for you again and again. Why wouldn’t you show up after all?’
And that day too, she had woken up in tears like always, for the past five years, silent, thinking. She hadn’t smiled for a very long time. Her eyes had lost all the glimmer, and self-pity had eaten her to half. She was an educated woman with an intelligent brain and a fluent tongue. Everyone adored her for the warmth she held for all and the light she reflected, guiding many, siding a few, emptying her own self. She had felt drained, fatigued and compromised for past couple of years or probably more. Only if there was some redemption in store for her too. She could give her life for that.
It was just another day. She was at the bookstore in the neighborhood, looking for some healthy bestsellers for her intellectual needs. Her tall, quiet posture, and somber face were not calling for any attention whatsoever. ‘Flowers grow on her fingertips, no wonder her touch is fragrant’. Someone was reciting the verse in the corner of the bookstore. His voice had shuddered her insides, her palms got sweaty and she could hardly feel her knees. ‘Who was that’, she thought to herself, struggling to keep her senses in check.
‘Like a morning dew, you whisper to the flowers of my heart while gently slipping from them,’ he continued to recite. ‘Every scent in my orchid of eyes, contains all of your essence, my blood sustains the..’. ‘Who’s there? Hello!’ Call it adrenaline rush or some latent epilepsy, she was breathing heavily and started calling out before he could finish the stanza. ‘Sir, ….could you, could you please keep it down, you are too loud to be reading in public,… ‘ some unnamed force was dragging her to the side of the store where that ‘Byronic hero’ was setting the stage on fire.
There he was. There were fireworks all around, cold chilling breeze of winter in the mid of July, loud music and mind numbing melodies, all at once. There he was. Her home. Her salvation. Her only haven she had long sought a key to. He was looking intently at her from his spectacles, long brooding gaze, going right through her, reading all that she had hidden so well in the deepest of corners of her dismayed heart. And then it started to rain in that scorching desert. He had smiled.
‘All of me is just all of you’, he completed the stanza in a whisper, held her hand and saved her.
And she hasn’t had another nightmare since then.
‘With Love,
MSK
MSKWritesNow 