Season

*Theme for the personal writings post at my readers club this week was Smog*


I met a friend after 15 years and he asked if I still crafted greeting notes brimming with love that only Qabbani's verses could bring; or wrote the letters that painted bright skies on sunlit beaches.

I smiled and stayed quiet. In his eyes I saw the trajectory that traced that past to this present. I witnessed the exact moment understanding and acceptance dawned there. His eyes dimmed.

I don't talk about it ... (there's no point either, to be honest) ... But every morning, the memory of you rises from my side to meet me with an engulfing embrace. I inhale the scent of it, feel the absence of you. My throat burns. My hand crawls on the cold sheet beside and I blink my eyes trying to will you into existence in this precise coordinate of space and time. The effort is futile. My eyes sting.

I leave the bed, step inside the shower and feel growing around me, like vines of a blooming bougainvillea, the thorny tentacles of your absence.

I dress and try to look at my form through your eyes. I see a faceless cemetery. In the hollow of chest now filled with toxic fumes of rancor, nothing grows. There's an unending season of a suffocating loss.

I leave home. Outside the car window the world is exactly like it is inside me. It is smog.


Image credits: @ell_enn at instagram.