The Torn Umbrella

It can sometimes be quoted as a coincidence, when Cupid silently follows you tip-toed, as a silent spectator, scribbling down excerpts of your conversations, as you walk with the man you find innocent but worthy. You feel all this time, someone’s keeping an eye on you. Still, he keeps you engrossed. You forget to look back and search for those probing, beady eyes. You enjoy it. Even I did.

I never thought, I would be standing at such a juncture of life. When I desperately want to retrace back my steps on this cursed path, and resume the same journey on ‘The Road Not Taken’. Frost’s poem was simply an extra chapter in the literature book. It was never meant to be felt.

He and I, both feared the outcome of this commitment. Probably, I loved him more. I couldn’t simply sit and watch him, being frisked away by some other girl, in front of my own eyes. I could sense the mirth that poured from his heart. Yet, I couldn’t fathom the depth of the abyss I was already falling into. The abyss of his love. Created by the multitudes of conversations over-phone, or during the lecture breaks. Sitting on either side of the same mahogany table, with my hands in his. Smiling to his many stupid jokes. I wanted to be his, and I wanted that he should think suite. Hopes, that he would love me all the same. The poison bubble, in the nectar of love, we were drinking from.

Being hurt, while residing in the mansion of love is commonplace. But, being pushed into the dingy catacombs of the palace of his love, where spiders of lore, spin forth webs of complication, is what I was subjected to. And when hurt transcends, it gives birth to pain. Pain, that suffocates you and tears of anger droop down your cheeks. My anger compelled me to grasp a stranger’s hand. A hand that only craved for my body, never for my soul. His silence said it all. He was lost to me. Just like a torn page, in the novel of my life. 

Solace had become a stranger to me. It was tough to live without him. Without his laughs that echoed, my tiny tree house seemed to have been ransacked each time I looked at it. No one lives there now. I became a culprit, a mockery of myself. Only he could pull me out of that cold water. Chilly, yet purging. He didn’t. His heart had already set on a new path. I simply had never been able to keep up with him.

Two breakups. My doing. Nothing left sans a fragile body. It was a mistake. He didn’t break my heart. My impatience did.

And here I am, standing on a bed of thorns. It could have been a bed of roses. I can’t lament. My tears will never find his hands as suitors again, waiting to wipe them, before they fall down. He still walks past every day, not acknowledging my presence. Lost in his own world, where I wished to live. I stand there transfixed, waiting to live a life that died in front of my own eyes. The heat is immense. It doesn’t matter. His love was the only umbrella I craved for.