Loved this post because it is straight from the heart.
A Life Dismantled sifting through the decades of accumulated stuff must haves in the moment diamonds in the rough for those timeless treasures, only bubble wrap will do shake the dust and cobwebs off comfy well worn shoes gently slip the photographs from old broken frames happy memories mingling with faces with no names shedding […]
I am numb—
Serene sea.
One walks in and
Offers condolence—
A drop that sends ripples
Across me.
Then come the tidal waves
Of reality
Crashing against my being.
I attempt to reply
But tears rise and choke me.
I inhale to calm down.
But the stormy sea knows no bounds.
I go under—
Drowning the illusion of restraint,
Once again.
I turn to hide
Lest the world may see
What a wreck
You have made of me.
Wait until the numbness returns.
And I’ll, again, be the serene sea.
Photo by Joshua Qualls at Unsplash
The dinner was a quiet one as usual.
He never spoke much. That’s why she fell sideways looking for emotional support.
She purposely avoided thinking of it as an ‘affair’. It made her feel guilty.
Anyway, it wasn’t like she was sleeping with him. They just chatted about everyday things–daily struggles at home and office, poetry, paintings, children, dissatisfaction with family life…
Sometimes they spoke of love or lack thereof in their lives. The easy conversations made her wonder how it would have been if she had married him instead…
The thought made her uncomfortable. She was, after all, a respectable woman. She had honored her parent’s choice for 19 years. She won’t go back now. Her husband is a good man, just not who she wanted…
If only he would talk to her…
Ask her about her day…
Tell her about his own…
Remind her in some way she wasn’t just a piece of meat…
Her husband finished his dessert quietly and got up to watch television. Sighing, she cleared the table and went back to chat with him again.
Photo by Dilyara Garifullina on Unsplash
He (looking in her phone screen): Cool birds! Where did you find these rare birds to click their pics?
She: They throng our rooftop. The tree they sit on stands next door.
He: How is it possible? I have lived here for 10 years and never seen one.
She: Seeker Finder…
He: What?
She: Ask the right Guru (religious teacher) and the answer might turn your life around. Though, it may cost you a thousand bucks stay at an Ashram (religious home-school).
He: What do you mean?
She: Ever read Hellen Keller’s Three Days to See?
He: Whatever…
Life is rather boring here, thanks to our ‘honorable’ prince.
First, he riled up the witch enough that she turned him into a Beast and the city to ruins. Then, rather than scoping out the nearby area for a kissable girl, he decided to mope around instead.
How did he expect her to find him? Did he have GPS installed, or a neon sign, “This way to the Cursed Prince”?
Does he even know about the existence of Online Dating? Men ‘meet’ sexy women out there all the time, make them fall in love, exchange virtual kisses! Who said the kiss had to be real?
But no, he had to wait for a century until this unfortunate woman walked in and fainted at his first sight! So much for true love!
Now he spends all the time hiding from her. He watches her from hiding spots behind the curtains and secretly follows her around like a lost pup.
Sigh! I wonder when that kiss is going to happen. After being lonely for a century, I am dying to watch some action—not that castles can die. We just sulk…for centuries…
Being immortal sucks.
Photo by Kevin Jackson @ Unsplash
Loved it through and through
You visited me again last night.
All the time,
You struggled with words
Trying and failing to say
What I could hear
In your eyes anyway.
What I had wanted to hear, forever.
Your hand in mine
Sending shivers down my spine,
You walked alongside me
Like good old days
Making jokes and telling tales.
Then you paused.
You looked at me with eyes so sad.
I knew you’re holding back.
There was a time
You could have told me things.
You lament missing that chance.
I wish you’d say it
So I can kiss you this time.
But as always, I wake up
Feeling your hands in mine.
It seems to be the pattern.
Every night in dreams you meet me.
Every waking hour, I try to forget
What can never be.
It took her two hours to accept that he stood her up. For the first time in their two-year relationship, he hadn’t turned up.
As she sat at the empty table, she had to admit she wasn’t shocked. Ever since she gave him the ‘news’ of her ‘pregnancy’ over the phone, he sounded distant. Later when she called for a date, he was too busy, which was a first too. But she insisted to meet anyway, hoping to end the hoax-gone-wrong in-person. But now, he was MIA.
She cursed her best friend for suggesting such a joke. The idiot always had a thing against her man. But even she had hoped he might consider marriage. All it did was push him away instead.
Well, she’d just go to his apartment and tell him the truth. She’d apologize for upsetting him…
That’s when she realized the joke was on her…
The first tear rolled down…
Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash
Sometimes, I wonder what if
You hadn’t said “Yes”.
Shattered in million pieces,
Fallen all over the place,
I would have longed for you
Like nobody else.
Sleepless nights,
Ragged breath,
The gutting pain,
A constant for years.
Sometimes, I wish
You hadn’t said “yes”,
So wouldn’t be shattered
In the million pieces,
Even after years
With you.
True incidents from my crazy life…
I have always been a TV Aerial, too receptive to things unseen. And having lived in 25 houses means that I received too many signals.
If you think it is funny, consider sleeping in your room for several years with the constant knowledge that someone is lurking in the next room; that your house is built on a demolished graveyard and the resident will most likely visit you in your dream; or that your dog is crazily barking at the ceiling of your room, which looks like it is made of water.
Only, you can’t see him…her…them…
You can’t ask them, however politely, to move their arse away. You can’t tell them, “Hey! Why don’t you go haunt Mrs. Snubnose in the house down the lane?” You might try exorcism, but it doesn’t always get the expected results, and failure will lead to a rebellion of the ‘permanent residents’ against you.
So, you get the idea.
Whenever faced with situations like these, my first response was to run to another room where my parents or my friends slept (depending on the location of the ‘incident’). But there are only so many times I could do that without raising suspicion.
Do you think I should have told them?
What response do you expect from them? If they were easy on me, they would have brushed it away by saying, “I don’t feel anything.”, “I think you are watching too many horror movies.”, or “You need to reign in your imagination.” Or they would have put it down as me “being a woman”. But, gradually, they would have begun questioning my intelligence. In the end, if they really loved me, they would have moved me out of the haunted house into a mental asylum.
So, telling my family and friends was a strict ‘No’.
Hence, most of the time, I would sit up late at night alone and try to discern what I was dealing with.
I would usually begin with questions like ‘how many?’
I know for sure that one of my houses had at least three. One of them lived in the room upstairs and tried to strangle me on the first night (I never went to that room at night again.). When I moved to the spare room downstairs, I felt another who liked to lay in the bed next to mine quite often. The third one used to simply cross the room at a certain time of the night and, if I blocked the path by placing my chair a certain way, it would begin muttering threats under its breath (Irony, I know!).
I would wonder what they were and if they could hurt me.
But there were too many possibilities: Ghosts, Poltergeists, Djinn, Ghouls… Since I couldn’t see them, I wasn’t sure. Their powers could also differ from the time they landed the job and the practice they had. They could have been around since before my great-great-great-grandfather was born or someone fairly new at the jig.
Did they mean to scare me?
Did they get paid for scaring humans like me or did they just exist as we do, and I just had a sensory overload by their presence? Aren’t lizards scared of me? Does that make me scary? (In case you are wondering, Lizards don’t scare me–I have lived in government-built houses half of my life.)
Did they mean to hurt me?
In most cases, they seemed to be just going on with their lives. Maybe they were late for their jobs but I blocked their path by strewing my stuff around. What if they were raising their kids in the house that (according to them) I decided to break in? I slept in their beds and ate from their bowls. Of course, they wanted me out. I wonder why only three tried to strangle me, especially since I was playing Ghazals around the house (Pure torture, I know!).
After my last encounter, I realized that in most cases, I can co-exist with them like lizards with me. So, now, I carry on with my life and let the Djinn in my spare room live in peace.
Short Stories | Fish-eye Perspective 