Hitting the keys (that's all)

Sitting by the television, seeing hours of inanity didn't quite lull me into a sleep and instead, I go for a stroll into that long walkway, past the mist that doesn't let you peer far back into it.

Could you have been the one? Was there a reason I fell for you just before the disaster was about to unfold, was the universe as always trying and I as always was not listening.

Oh its me and my purposelessness staring each other in the eye again. Midst the emptiness of a thousand miles, a hapless lost one all over again. 

Give me some light to guide me by, a little breeze to shoe my time by. Maybe a little something to hold on to, as I try to steer past these tides or maybe just loose myself in them, need either, cause I am done struggling with doldrums. 

All the love I needed to give, all the dreams I needed to fulfill, all the joy I was meant to share, its all bottled up within and it is corralling one moment and dying the other, and I quite don't know what to do with this anymore. 

My heart is also selfish, much like yours, so teach me too how to throw it all away. A hundred wile wishes and no wish fairies, I dance along with the shadows of swaying trees under the shining moon. A beat in my head and sweat on my brow, a spring in my step and a little shade of a smile on the lips. Nine to date and still the embers burn, must have been some fire.

And a pain came back, like an old time pal,
Ah the many long years, were just a little few hours separating us,
And I still was in that old mill office, and you still found me funny,
The giggle, the smile, my heart;
Oh how I wish this wasn't what it was to become,
Few starry nights of loving you, loosing myself bit by bit, darkness ripped by a bright shining dust of glitters, all just serenading dreams of drunken love.

Oh, how I wish to touch and hear you whisper again in darkened rooms.

Jewel

Hello, is all she said, a hello was all it was. But dreamers, they sometimes only need hello's, and he was a dreamer.

In the sun-drenched space between him and her, myriad rainbows formed and disappeared, all in the few moments that he peered into her eyes.

She always had her way with men, the mischief that danced through her serene and deep eyes, set prominently in that undecipherable face, made most men flounder.

He told her of how he had often hoped for another chance meeting with her, ever since the time she had caught him by surprise while sitting alone at the edge of the valley on the foot of the abandoned old cottage near Toru, the biggest hill in town.

It wasn't the best thing to say, and it was almost visibly boring for her. But he was never known to be a conversationalist.

After several minutes of such inanities, she told him her name was Jewel and he blurted 'how appropriate'. That, awkwardly enough, broke some ice and she let a small laugh through, which almost made him feel like pulling her up close.

These were early days, he knew. But also that, there would be a lifetime of these days.
Standing on that rather cold but sunny morning, in front of the small bakery that opened early to catch the morning walkers, he had no way of knowing that Jewel was about to change him in ways he could not imagine then,  he and Jewel were headed for adventures.

Dark evening kites

Dark evening sky lit up with red kites,

Flickering in the wind, shaken and unsure,

Eyes on the sky, I stumble past your door,

And walk right into, you and I.

These long past years, as if, just a short few hours,
And  we were back in that old mill place, the conversation, your eyes, our smile, my heart;

Stars far, you close by and the smells of love,
Fleeting touches and whispers of the passing night,

How would one not see love as a lie,

When all that's left in its wake are slow dying embers of stale memories,
Awake through these long nights, how long will I keep stumbling past your door.

Hills and a heart

It wasn't a dark night, it was in fact a rather bright night of lights.

As I contemplated the many faces shimmering back from the water flowing past the bridge, I felt quite oblivious to all presence around. Standing there I could no longer recall any purpose in my life. It was a strangely liberating feeling. I have had enough with goals and pursuits, tired and bored, this purposelessness is in a way besotted.

Being a dreamer always came naturally to me, like the myriad dolphins I could see looping majestically from the water below, their eyes twinkling like tiny faraway stars, my mesmerizing dreams too had always kept coming. No longer.

Thus, bereft of purpose and dreams, I sought solitude on this crowded bridge, over the lonely stream that cuts right through my little hill town. If you want to be alone, go to the most crowded corner of town, my father had told me, what now seems like a lifetime ago. So I had headed here this evening. After pretending to be unaffected all through the day, I could no longer convince myself that the gnawing restlessness I had been feeling all day, was just a passing coincidence and had nothing to do with the strange and chance meeting of yesterday.

9A past midnight

I have been waiting for a girl like you, played softly in the background as I went about looking for my seat in the last flight out of Bangalore, in a rather sweltering April late night. She sat ahead of me, her perfect honey brown mop of lazily curling hair and her quick nervous jabs to keep them in place was all I could see at first. A side glance confirmed my doubts.

That momentary glance itself was enough to throw me back by a lifetime, as if I was back to the days of lying awake in her arms, in the sun drenched brown fields, past where we used to live when we knew each other. The days would turn to dusk and dusk's to night, until we were reminded that nights must part us, and with heavy steps and perhaps heavier hearts we would head back to our homes, with an unsaid promise to meet there again. The serenity of those eyes and the calmness they gave me in just a glance, the unsaid tales they told me of how I owned her heart. All came back to me, as If the intertwining twenty four years had turned to vapor and I was still the dreamer and she still my muse.

Without any hesitation, as if in a trance, I tapped her on the shoulder, and saw the annoyed surprise of her eyes melt into an unrecognizable mix of memories and perhaps anguish. It took her a few moments to realize that she was looking into familiar eyes, eyes she had often kissed and closed with feather light touch of her fingers, as we  used to lay entwined, hidden in the tall dry grasses of the yard behind the abandoned railway tracks. Maybe there was a certain dread of seeing those eyes again, but it passed away as she saw maybe the remnants of an unfinished love in my eyes.

I felt tongue-tied, she at loss of words perhaps. How do you speak to someone you knew intimately, after a lifetime of being a stranger. How do you forget love that permeated your soul and made you what you are. How do greet someone you had called so many names in those long dark nights that refused to pass. It made me stiff and rooted. I waited for that awkwardly long moment to pass, then I called her name in what seemed to me a broken croaking voice. That made her smile, a smile much like the one's that used to light up a thousand stars in my sky, every time she had laughed at my apparent nothing's until tears would well up in her eyes. In a voice pretending to sound surprised, I thought, she said hello. Though we both knew, there was no surprise, we had to meet again, else the myth of cruelty of our fate would have remained unproven.

As we sat there, pretending to ask each other all the meaningless things about how the others life had went by during this lifetime that had separated our meeting and parting, I started to realize how the passage of time, perhaps, had meant nothing deep down inside.

I wanted to ask her why she never said goodbye and never let me find her. Perhaps I was imagining, but I saw a slight tremble of a tear at the corner of those soulful eyes. And so it began, the rather unusual sequence of events, which I had no means to imagine then, would change a lot of things I thought I was and also a lot of things I thought I was going to become.