Tale 1
Days pass by easy. It is the nights that crawl by.
Changing calendars tell me it has been ten years since the day he didn’t come back home from work as promised. The devilish death kept an unwanted date with him. But the searing pain deep within makes it feel as if it was just yesterday.
The world has moved on and so have the people. But my heart is stuck at that singularly defining moment, where he grinned at me across the milling crowd at a metro station.
People have tried to fix me up with others. Some far spectacular, some far accomplished than my own man. Nobody measures up. I keep searching…vainly…to find a balm and a closure.
So I settle for the nights where the second pillow becomes him and I narrate the day to the pillow. He is an attentive listener you see and very cuddly too!
I closed myself to others for him. My punishment or his?
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Tale 2
We sit opposite each other at this big dining table, sipping our morning cuppas, scanning the daily news sheets.
Silence is deafening, punctured only by the tinkling of cups.
The children who sewed our mismatched marriage and kept the conversations going have grown wings and made themselves busy.
The empty nest has left us with nothing much to talk about or connect. We just roll by and stick around, mark our presence in each others’ success meets.
Oh, I nothing to complain about. I more than surpass all the accepted societal parameters of success.
I am a role model for the next_gen apparently.
I’m sure he feels the same about our stifling bonds. Nothing captivating.
So we keep up with the pretenses while we mull over our escape routes, try our options to rectify the mess or morass.
But we carry on. This journey.
Because we both are afraid of loneliness.
Because he is now my habit and I’m his.
I have closed myself to others for him.
My punishment or his?
