Aadatein | An OS Collection

5- Atlantis, We Fall

"I can't save us, my Atlantis, we fall
We built this town on shaky ground"

(Atlantis by Seafret)

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In the aftermath of it all, what haunts him the most is the grip with which she held him before the bullet meant for him, pierced through her. 

(Desperate, relieved and a little like he had become something she couldn't afford to lose)

The sheen of tears that refuse to flow down his eyes, the screams barred by the lump in his throat, the emptiness he's always battled finally conquering his soul - there's a certain look to a man bound in silver sheathed wires that fell in love with the aurora borealis of the sky. A man that realized a little too late, the bloom of a rose in the deepest shade of red, in his soul. 

He sits by her bed, her soft hand in his as he gazes at her ashen face. Her essence, liquid sunshine, now locked behind the silence of a sacrifice she should never have made. He sits by her bed, haunted, the claws of loss, guilt and grief only kept at bay by the rise and fall of her chest. 

Armaan Poddar sits by his wife's side, the last vestiges of everything he's built in the atlantis of his soul, submerging in the ocean of nothingness. 

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For as long as he's known comprehension, he's known obligation. Unbound, free, unconditional is never something he experienced but tried his best to be. In the early years of his childhood, he pressed close to a mother whose eyes would never light up at him despite wrapping reluctant arms to give him warmth. He held her and never let the thought that it wasn't enough fester. He was a child when he learnt to be content with what he was given.

He was a child when he wiped the tears dripping down his mother's eyes replete of yearning and heartache. He placed her head on his lap and sang her lullabies. He was a child when he learnt to heal what he never broke.

In the early years of his childhood, he was given toffees when he listened to his Dadi Sa. He was a child when he learnt them to be the words of her love. He was a child when he learnt he had to earn what should have been deserved. It was the beginning of learning to give his all when he was never enough. 

In the early years of his teenage, he remained in the shadows while his younger siblings were showered with love. He had learnt the truth then, of his mother and her heritage bereft of worth. He swallowed the pain in his chest in favor of affection for their strong bonds. After all, they still raised and trusted him so that meant love right. He was young when he whispered to himself he was different but loved.

In the early years of being a young adult, he grew up to forming his own idea of love. A love that did not defy his duty towards his family but would be someone who might make him his first priority. He was still young when he wove, around the shackles of his responsibilities and muffled desire of unconditional acceptance and priority, an idea of love. 

In the early years of his adulthood, he met a woman with exquisite eyes and felt a flutter. She seemed to be the one. He presumed to be a man in love even when he chose his family over her. He would never tell(his guilt is too much for that)but that she brought them to this point of choice is something he will never be able to forgive. 

He was a man who lost yet again, when he resigned himself to a fate bereft of the smallest thing he had hoped for.

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