Recollections
After four years of being in a long distance relationship where we’ve been confined to watching pix elated, low resolution renditions of each other on our LED screens, or conversations over the phone, interspersed with long minutes of static and echo – I imagined I would be used to your constant, unyielding absence from my every day.
Unfortunately, I am not.
There’s something incredibly powerful about
An unexpected storm and the ensuing rains
That can bring life to a standstill.
There’s something tender about
A blackout that drowns out
The sounds of a splendid city.
There is something hauntingly beautiful
About the silhouettes of the large timeless mountains
Against the crimson of the night
The long, muted shadows they cast
Washing our feet like waves of memories.
It is only then, in our absolute unconditional inability to hide within our routines, that we are made fully aware of the overwhelming truth about our insecurities.
We never really outgrow them – we merely pretend to disregard their existences until they become just another abnormality in our otherwise mundane realities.
And at moments like these, when I am forced to stop and reflect – your relentless absence begins to fill up my void like an impenetrable blackness – overwhelming, vague and without answers. I am lost in the ocean of your memories, of your what-ifs, like a sail boat bereft of its sail – tossed around in an engulfing, fluid darkness without a shore in sight.
But you know what they say
About the mighty, timeless trees caught in the storm.
Like our massive, inflexible egos
They are worn away by distance and age
Washed away into the sea of oblivion
Tipped over the edge of our consciousnesses.
But hope is like a shy, unnoticed weed flower that grows on the sides of old buildings. Hope survives after a cruel storm, because there was not much to begin with after all. And I give myself time to stop and think about you, your thoughts that continue to grow unnoticed, unmarked on the edges of my soul that grows wiser with age and time.
I let you linger, like the first smattering of green at the break of spring – like the first rays of a sun, after a cold frozen night.
Maybe, after all these years – the skip in the heart beat has reduced to a singular flutter. Maybe, worries and routines have dimmed the twinkles of our eyes when they meet. And when we hold each other, the magic of our reunion is somewhat dulled by our inescapable tomorrows.
But like glowing embers in an ancient fireplace, the warmth of our hearts still smolders underneath the ashes of our present. Like the lambent glow of the moonlight, only obscured by the clouds of our today.
Showmock Ghosh 2019
*This was originally penned down a couple of years back during a particularly low period in my life. These are phases that hit me like low tides at regular intervals.*
