Fade
I have two brains. They are paired to think on two separate lines, working simultaneously. But it starts getting troublesome when thoughts start jumbling up. These are times when I must surrender.
In my leaving memories, there used to be a river. It kept flowing. Incessantly. Untiring.
In my other memory that refused to leave, there was a girl beside its bank. She kept sitting. Incessantly. Untiring.
I could swear that these two memories were unrelated. But they were inseparable. I remember walking to the girl for the first time and asking her -
“Why are you always sitting over here?”
“Need it have a reason?” She looked back at me.
“A question can never be an answer to another question.”
“I don’t believe in answers,” she answered, indifferently.
Since that day, at the beginning of some uncertain dusks, I went and sat beside her. We never spoke. Just watched the water flowing. Listened to its music.
I don’t remember when I stopped visiting her. Perhaps, the day I died. Perhaps, the day she did. Perhaps, the day we all do.
The only thing I remember now is that the river was a part of my leaving memories whereas the girl wasn’t. Therefore, the river slowly started fading out. And when the river was no more the girl sat in front of a defying blankness. Staring at nothing over the horizons. Without the flowing river, time no longer moved for her. She sat trapped in a single unending moment …. within one unending heartbeat resided her life. And the sound of that heartbeat was becoming loud. Shrill. Unbearable.
There was nothing beyond the unbearable. Only a never-ending stretch of endlessness. No more was to be the music of the river. Years later I learnt the scientific name of my guilt that took the river out of her life. But it was too late.
By then, my schizophrenia had already taken her life.
