It's an hour past midnight, and Karishma lies awake in her bed. Tired of her thoughts' constant bugging, she sighs and heads towards the dimly lit corridor leading to the storage room. Each step she takes feels like a small victory, a deliberate escape from her mind's relentless chatter.
She reached for the switch and flooded the storage room with light. The soft glow revealed rows of dusty boxes stacked against the wall. Some bags are lying around one corner, catching up dust. Karishma stepped into the room, her eyes stuck to one particular box. It was not labeled, unlike the rest of them. She lifted the box and sat near it. As she opened it, the air thickened with the scent of old paper and suppressed memories. The box had some old notebooks, pencils, a plastic bag of worn rubber bands, some old receipts, and a couple of roughly torn boarding passes for a flight.
She picked up an old book, rusty in the corners. Her fingers hesitated over the dusty spine, its once vibrant cover now faded and worn with time. She traced the edges, feeling the rough texture beneath her touch. Both bitter and sweet memories lurked within the withered pages, waiting to be revisited.
Karishma eased open the cover, and her breath caught in her throat when she saw the name inscribed on the first page. She traced "Haseena" written in elegant script with her fingertips. A choked sob escaped her lips along a tear long held in check. It fell in silence down her cheek. She traced her fingers over the faded ink, and Karishma felt the weight of the past settle around her, a bittersweet reminder of what once was and what could have been. In the soft glow of the lamplight, she allowed herself to linger, lost in the echoes of a love that had long since slipped away.
She turned a few pages and found a scribble above a picture of a shrine: "This place feels like home." In a different handwriting just below it, it was written, "My dear home, take me with you next time."
Once inscribed with love and passion, the letters now looked weary and lost. Their ink faded, and the pages longed for a touch that once embraced them. The book had once thrived in the warmth of love, knowing only the passion of two lovers. Now, it held the anguish of the past, a relic of what once was, weighed down by sorrow and regret. Passion? Long lost.
It had been years since she opened this box of 'rotten snippets of the past.' That's how Karishma once described the box to her therapist. Each item within the box carried a whisper of nostalgia, a fragment of a moment frozen in time. They were relics of a bygone era, reminders of their shared existence. But as the years passed, those same artifacts morphed into specters of regret, silently haunting Karishma's every waking moment.
She closed the lid of the box after revisiting every item. She kept the old book aside. She pushed the box back to its place and went to the living area with the book in her hand. She grabbed a pen from her table and started scratching Haseena's name. "It's time to let you go forever, Haseena." She mumbles.
She cannot live her life waiting in fear of being transported back into the past, where memories haunt her every move. She has to let go. This also meant severing the physical ties that reminded her of Haseena—disposing of the book, the box, and anything threatening to unravel her fragile resolve and plunge her back into chaos. It is a painful but necessary step towards healing, towards reclaiming her shattered spirit.
She kept the book in her bag and then returned to the bed, her movements gentle and deliberate. Leaning down, she softly kissed Sara's cheek before crawling under the blanket beside her. A single thought surfaced as she closed her eyes, lingering momentarily and then vanished: "You have no power over me. And you don't get to control my life."
She nestled closer to Sara, seeking comfort in her warmth. Karishma's breathing gradually matched Sara's rhythm, and she felt herself begin to relax. The exhaustion of the past few days weighed heavily on her, pulling her into a deep sleep. She knew she had only a few hours to rest before the demands of her work called her back, but for now, she embraced the brief respite, finding peace in the moment.
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In-yeon
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