𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐎𝐕𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐎 : 𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐎𝐧 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐬

..𝐑𝐔𝐇 𝐄̀ 𝐃𝐎𝐋𝐂𝐄..

unwind with - Tera Mera Rishta by
Mustafa Zahid

My world tilted not gently, not like the slow sway of something shifting into place but violently like the earth kicked me out of its rhythm.
For a heartbeat I felt every wound I had buried drag itself upward, clawing into the light, raw and screaming.
My breath caught somewhere between my chest and throat, refusing to move, refusing to believe.
Because there he was.
Kabir Amory Arya, the ugly truth I never wanted see again.
Not a memory, not a nightmare, not a ghost fashioned by loneliness him.
The one person I prayed I would never see again and yet the one person my heart mourned with every silent dawn.
His back was toward me yet I felt the recognition like a blade sliding between my ribs.
It was not something I saw but it was something my soul remembered before my eyes caught up.

Three years and six months.
Three years and six months separated us but in that single breath, every second of that distance collapsed into nothing.
I froze.
My heart forgot its rhythm.
My palms went cold and hot at the same time, shaking as though the ground beneath me had cracked open.
I tried to inhale but the air stung my chest.
I tried to step away to flee back into the safety of my routine but my legs simply refused to cooperate.
Instead I moved blindly forward.
One step then another like someone walking straight into lightning.

And then I collided with a waiter I did not even notice.
The tray tipped, the cup flew and the coffee exploded on the floor in a shattering crash that tore through the room like a warning bell.
I froze, inhaling sharply and the entire café seemed to gasp with me.
Even the silence felt sharper, colder as though everyone else sensed the storm erupting inside my chest.
Something inside me broke open, wide and terrifying, like a storm ripping through a locked room.

My knees weakened, trembling under the sudden weight of three years and six months of rage and prayers and unanswered questions.
I felt the familiar burn behind my eyes, the one I had learned to swallow down a thousand times before but today it hit harder and fiercer as if the universe wanted to see how much more I could endure.
My hands grew icy,  my fingers curling in on themselves, desperate for something solid to hold.
But nothing was solid anymore.
Not the floor, not the air, not even the name carved into the ruins of my heart.