I WAS BUNKING EVENING classes to sit by the shore on a cool, crisp, Missouri afternoon. Sand castles breaking, the scarlet sundown, shells beneath my feet, everything around me reminded me of life and everything reminded me how I wasn't a part of it.
I dressed like the kind of girls you write poetry about, blush pink kurti, oxidized jhumka and bangles, kajal underneath my eyes and light wavy hair blowing with the wind but I felt nothing like them. No matter how hard I tried, I never felt like the heroine I wanted to be. I was instead the character trapped in a horror movie, the ones who know about the presence of the shadows, the ones who warn you: andar mat jaana and then you forget about them while they watch you.
I looked with a macabre gaze at everything, everything around me, and then watched it die like the pink tulips in my hands. I bought them this a few hours ago. They couldn't survive my gaze, nothing ever does.
Feeling pathetic at my attempt to look pleasant, I dusted my white pants. I feel hopeful in the mornings, at night, I return home to eternal hopelessness.
I was ready to leave when my eyes fell on a group of people playing volleyball. Adjusting my spectacles, I squinted, oh, OH. There he was, 13000 km away from the place I thought I left behind. I kept staring at him. Everything in me screamed invasive. THIS IS NOT YOUR VISION TO SEE, MOVE YOUR EYES. I have always felt that way, like nothing in this world has ever been mine.
To make it worse, he caught my eyes. For a flickering moment, he stared while I tried to do everything to make that gaze look unintentional as if I did not think anything of it. Turning the volume of bade acche lagte hain playing on my phone, I desperately tried to leave, anything to escape this presence I felt mortified with.
I was nearly running when I felt a slight tap on my arm. Of course, that won't be him, maybe some kid, maybe some other friend, maybe my professor and then I turned. It was him with one of my jhumkas in his hand. He held those same intense eyes under his thick eyebrows that made me want to want to know everything about him but he reminded of those dreams we keep for the end of the day to replay, the ones so out of our reach. I never considered myself worthy enough to be a part of those dreams. So, we talked thrice if you count is this calculus class questions including now when he held out my jhumka in his hand. I checked my vacant ear, hastily grabbed it and murmured a thank you turning to leave.
❛Hey wait!❜ We both blinked and stared. No, I don't know what goes on in his mind, I'm not trying to guess. As much as I know though, I don't think he remembers me. Please let it be that way and save me from the embarrassment.
❛Do I know you?❜ fucking entitled bitch. Is everyone supposed to know what you know or you don't? ❛I don't know. Do you?❜
❛You just look familiar. Were we in the same class?❜
❛No.❜ Of course, I lied. Do you know my ego? It's bigger and uglier than his eyelashes.
❛Okay, sorry.❜
❛It's no problem and thank you.❜ I said gesturing to the jhumka.
Ishaan Sood. He was an addition to all my failed love tales. Two or three years after my first heartbreak when the person I loved just suddenly stopped interacting with me, after I heard my bestfriend saying he asked her to be his girlfriend, I met Ishaan. I tried my best to guard my heart and whatever I felt for Ishaan was obviously not as deep as my first love. The first time I had my heartbroken, it was because I tried my best to love him even though loving never came easy to me. I have always truly only loved myself but I still tried and he discarded all my efforts.
When I was seventeen, I tried forgiving myself deluding into thoughts like it was an unfortunate incident, it's not always that people fall in love with each other. I gave myself a second chance, I let my heart on loose. When I was seventeen, I didn't know much about the world, I didn't know that it wasn't an unfortunate incident, I didn't know that it was my annoying chants, my anger that I forced onto people, my ugly cackle, those squint eyes, that fat nose. I wish I had brown eyes, at least something that the poets write about, would belong to me but I didn't and there was no poem I could find myself in, no song I liked talked about me, so nothing in this world, not even my life felt mine.
YOU ARE READING
the pink skies don't lie
Romance❝in front of my mother and sisters, i pretend love is cheap and vulgar. i act like it's a sin but at night, i dream of a lover who makes love like he's separating salt from water.❞ -----Salma Deera from salt.
