Weathering up

When kids, we are happy, playful and ever- rejoicing. Our only worry: how to add to merry making! Then one day, we grow up. We all do. Our playful self gets locked up in the closet with our toys if all of those are not lost during shifting houses. Our merrymaking plans shrink like our once-upon-a-time-used-to-be favorite dress. The only time we then cheer up is to the tinkling of our wine- filled stem-glasses. Yet, all that put together never brings the real us back. What we were born as gets dumped somewhere with the old greeting cards- yellowed and torn at the edges, molded, getting cushier with every passing year. However neatly folded, there comes a time when the printed matter appears greasy. The handwritten matter fades before that. Then, one day as you try to flip through the tissue soft papers, it crinkles between your fingers, disjoining. The papers underneath rustles away to dust… you barely are able to preserve any of it anymore.

But you don’t die. You continue to live; only your essence does no more. The crisp crackle in you dies.

The cotton candy of memories continues to breathe in you; emerging from time to time making the you live in parts.

Long after he is gone, after hours of having locked yourself up in denial to face the fact that he is gone and yet leaving the door ajar hoping for him to come back and just when you are coming to live in the present tense; your brain catches the smell of his hair. You shrug your head in an attempt to wake yourself up from that illusionary state only to realize that that smell of his has made home in your mind, your senses… your hair. You smile at the very thought embracing the realization of newer facts that even when gone, his essence lives in you. As you do so, you see him smile. You do all of that with your eyes wide opened. Two warm drops roll down your cheeks. Only you would know if that’s in his remembrance or if a sense of fulfillment wrapped you up making you warm and cozy even in a chilling fall evening.

A new set of “to be preserved forever” takes place of those wasted, wilted petal like greetings. The child in you is born wanting to run around, giggling, setting foot in awkward toddling steps. No amount of cheering drink could ever make you as tipsy as you are now. Your sky is full of cotton candy clouds – of the color you prefer looking at often. This is no fairy tale for you are sane, sober… and sobbing still. What just happened?

Is that love- you ask yourself? Your tears say nothing; they do what they are best at, roll down your cheeks.

You remember of him holding your face, kissing you while you were moving around your house. He had stopped you unaware keeping his promise he had made before dozing off the night before. Or was it really that he had wanted to then? It hadn’t mattered then. It certainly doesn’t now. What does is: you think of him with teary eyes, craving for his chest to hide your face letting you dissolve all of your hurt and pain; making you a free-spirited teen… again. Such is how he makes you feel since you have known him.

A divorce and a deceit together during the last twelve months of knowing him could not deter that feeling to grow. It’s grown up into a young tree, just as how he is, branching to reach out to unconquered horizons, swaying through every wisp, every breeze and every storm that took off a few trees whenever it set off. Not this one. It’s young but not fragile. His agility has kept him stood up to sun, all the rain and through the nights.

Such is how you feel now. Ever since the leaves brushed past your cheeks, you have begun to live.