See, I came back to you
There you are lying, beautiful and serene. Like how I remembered
you when I was far away. And I remember you had bought this sari with me. I always
loved this color on you. With that soft music playing in the background, you
look like a painting to me. Your fingers look so beautiful right now, painted
in that pink color. The beautiful long fingers that you dipped in the red curry
that you cooked for me on every Sunday for lunch, peppered with tamarind sauce
and lemon juice, and made me lick them so that I could tell if I liked the
flavor that you had spent hours trying to perfect.
When I was away from you, where I went to make myself
into a giant of that underbelly, I thought of you every single day. I remember
myself sitting there now, under that large dilapidated terrace and reminiscing everything
that had happened between us: I am thinking about you every single moment of
every single day. Thinking about everything that you ever did for me and
everything you ever meant to me. And I want to come back. For every tear that
left your large brown eyes and dropped on the Earth. For every lovely song that
you sang to encourage me when I struggled with gutless spineless craven men and
women spattered shamelessly around the world undeservedly and unnecessarily.
For everything that you have done for me that has amazed me beyond belief...
As you lie down now, your face is calm like how I always
remembered it during those days in the foreign country when you haunted me with
your smiles and voices, with your love which refused to die in my heart, which
chased me in every alley I entered, every train I sat in, every bed I slept on,
every night I spent sitting awake and every dream I woke up sweating from. When
I finally, thankfully felt like I was sliding towards the peaks of lightheaded
glory, somewhere in my heart the repellent faint hope of finding the undiluted
tenderness in the depth of your heart all over again made me hesitant and fearful.
You were making me weak, my dear, without you knowing…
You are not moving now. The music in the background has
also stopped. The beautiful long fingers are still and the delicate toes of your
nimble feet are still. The translucent yellow edge of your sari is running up from
your fingers to your long neck. It is going round and round around your neck and
is somehow making the rays of the sun falling on your face look more yellow and
bright. I look at your eyes, wide open, staring at the ceiling. Dark big brown eyes
that I had to avoid and look away as I had tightened the edge of your sari more
and more around your neck.
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