Diverged. by HAC

                                                                                              

“Why do you come here every day?” He assumed that she asked it.

“I knew you would ask me why I come here every day. But, I have no reason. My family stays here.  And, coming home every day is not even questionable. So, stop asking me. It annoys me. I knew that you would be tired and wouldn’t be making dinner tonight,” He said and placed two polybags on her cemented grave.

“I won’t hear any excuse. So what if you are not feeling hungry. It’s almost 7:30 and the sun will be down any moment,” He waited for her to reply.

“Fine! Even I’m not feeling hungry,” He looked at the other side.

“Why don’t you accept that I’m dead,” He assumed that she said this with her trademark irritated expressions.

The moisture in his eyes lasted for a while and then slightly and silently, tears skied down. His heartbeat felt the burden and skin felt the coldness that left him alone. Taking the palm in-between his teeth, he tried to feel the pain. The pain of losing her was different from everything that can hurt, make you bleed, may crack the bones or worse, make you feel dead. It felt like as if someone has pushed his hand inside your chest and the hand is squeezing your heart to make that person bounce out of it. It feels like someone is continually scratching his\her nails on your delicate heart in order to remove the footprints of that person.

“If I decide to accept that you are not alive. First off, I won’t use ‘dead’, ‘not alive’ sounds less harsh. If I decide to accept that you are not alive, I’m scared that I would lose a part of me. When you died, I precisely diverged in two people; the familiar one and the unfamiliar one. The familiar one, that I knew the most, decided to walk away with you. And, the unfamiliar one bought my body to stay. I don’t come here just to meet you. I come here to feel complete. My other part is here, somewhere hiding in the bushes, maybe.  When I come here at my home, I feel alive. I don’t want to…” his voice trailed off as his sight rejected to give him a clear view of her.

The wind gushed and he felt a touch on his shoulders. His sight, too blur to see.

“I don’t want this stranger to stay in me, I want myself. Sneak out of this death thing and come back. I promise I will give anything to keep you alive. Just sneak out once, we will go far away where no one would ever find us.”

He started moaning and coughing. His cheeks were wiped out with tears and his words gave us. He had so much to share, and the best he could do was cry it all out. This was the quickest way to lighten his heart. 

There is this promise that ‘Our love will be forever’ and there is this thing called ‘life’. The latter one often laughs over the former one and the former cribs in the land of destiny.  He could feel it cribbing in the silence of their bedroom.  He never felt complete, doesn’t matter how many pillows he kept around him or how much he curled himself in the blanket.

“I feel that every breath is polluted now, my whole life is tainted as you had stopped breathing. I’m sorry that I find my home here.”

He opened the door of his car, parked next to the grave, made himself comfortable by pushing back the seat and closed his eyes. In no time, he fell asleep. The leather seats still held her fragrance.

“Aashna, come please,” he was dog tired, yet the sleep wasn’t around.

“You are such a kid, you should learn to sleep without me,” She said, as she walked out of the washroom after changing her dress.

“I don’t have to learn that, you are not divorcing me, right?” He arched his eyebrow.

“Right! But you never know,” She furled her arm over him in the blanket.

“I don’t want to know…”He hugged back and slept. In her Fragrance.

-Himanshu Appie Chhabra