I didn’t need to open the door to let her in, that would only have proved her wrong and shattered my belief, for at that moment, I wanted to believe. Tough times, you know, waking up with longing to see eye to eye what you dreamt the whole night about, what you wished morning came faster for, what you wished would never ever let you oversleep, because this was just too important. Much too important than anything else, even examinations (with varying degrees of preparation), even interviews, even a date with your wife-to-be, because this is something that could eventually lead you to it, or so you like to believe. And belief is this vice that you’d wish you never held, once it starts to hold you back.
I didn’t tell her anything she couldn’t see for herself, and there was nothing she couldn’t, I had written it all on my mind and she was close enough to not miss out even on a single letter. I leant myself on both my arms, feet firm on the ground as I sat on the side of my bed, and she sat beside me, legs hovering an inch from the ground, for she was short. I smiled. I was looking nowhere but at her feet, at how she swung them back and forth from time to time, at how she swayed, deciding on the rhythm of the world as she did that, and I couldn’t help but be mesmerized. She was still a girl, still the girl who was as young as me, despite attempts from folk to marry her on and on and on and on to the same man, writing incarnation after incarnation and I could tell that she was tired, her eyes told me that. I looked at them. I’m not someone who could tell hazel from green and brown from black, but I could tell ‘impacting’ from ‘not’ and she had the prettiest pair of eyes I’ve seen on a girl: pretty big eyes that came alight when she smiled, and she was smiling right there, looking into mine, asking me not to worry, telling me everything that went wrong went wrong only to make ‘fine’ sound better than just that. And she said the world could do with a little more magic, with a little more faith, as faith is fun, it’s like the eternal game of hide and seek and you find you can never exhaust yourself playing it, refreshments galore. I told her I never disbelieved in her, and that I only waited for this moment to come, post eighteen years of penance under the veil of cynicism, for I can’t tell the world that I believe in no part of the cloud but its silver lining. She laughed, not at my pitiful metaphor, but at how glad I was making her, how light she felt despite the load of all the world’s responsibility, including mine, and how I was responsible for that, out and out.
She dropped a tear on my shirt as she wept with joy, leaning on, and I lifted her up by her chin, telling her to not weep, for she would flood the world otherwise. She closed her eyes as a drop trickled down her cheeks, onto my thumb and to the ground from my elbow. And I stopped the next to come with my eyelash.
She disappeared in a puff of smoke, ten minutes later. What happened before shall stay a secret, barely revealed.
I had helped move the world. Something I would sleep on, anytime.
No comments:
Post a Comment