NEPENTHE

Crystal Hearts- A Dream Sequence

...and I was seated on a green, velvety surface, possibly park grass, looking up at the blue, melancholy sky, when out of nowhere, you come and sat down next to me.

And I was wearing that green dress you said you loved. You were wearing jeans and a shirt. The colour of the shirt is..... I can't describe it. But it suits your eyes. And your soul.

'and sometimes,' you say, as if we were continuing a conversation, though we hadn't really seen each other in years, 'When I'm really down, I think of you. And it somehow makes it all better.'

You turn to me and smile. Your smile gives me a sweet feeling.

(It once used to be the cloying flavour of aspartame, then later the bittersweetness of dark chocolate. But now, all I can taste is the mildness of milk chocolate. This is the moment, I realise I have healed)

I smile, not knowing how to respond. You look over at me.

'You've changed so much! I mean in a good way!', you add, hastily. Your voice is like cotton, not too rough, not too soft. But so reassuring.

'You too.' I say. We smile at each other, and simultaneously look up. The sky has turned strawberry pink, and then suddenly, pink glitter comes pouring down.

(Sudden too, was how we fell in love. Even more sudden still was how we fell, out of it.)

The pink glitter falls, but you seem suspiciously unimpressed. I touch the sparkling powder to my tongue. Tastes like honey.

You ask, impulsively, 'Did you ever regret falling in love with me?'

I gasp, startled,'You haven't changed at all... Still as blunt as...'

'You're avoiding the question'. You interrupt.

'Well...I...no. No, I never regretted it'

'Why not?' You ask, curious.

'It made me....wiser', I say, after a long pause. Despite being pretty fluent in paper and print, my speech in real life is punctuated by full stops and space bars.

'I feel the same', you mumble.

'Do you think our love would have lasted if one of us wasn't too selfless and the other too selfish?', you ask.

'I don't know. I..guess we'll never know', I murmur.

(We were two crystal hearts, with a deep crack running down the middle. But instead of deforming us, it gave us newer, deeper facets. So that in the sun, we created a spectrum that outshone any perfect crystal prism)

You brush glitter off your colourful, colourless shirt. And say, 'I'm glad I got that out of the way.'

'Me too.'

I ask something I had been meaning to ask for a long time.

'Did you cry when....', I couldn't complete the question. But you understood.

'I did. What heartless monster wouldn't?', you reply.

This was what I had wanted then, but now, I feel cruel, for hoping that you had cried when we parted ways. I still had a lot to learn.

'Please forgive me, if I hurt you in any way. I honestly didn't mean to', I say.

'Hey! You stole my dialogue!!', you shout, trying to make me laugh and succeeding. You laugh along with me....... And then

I open my eyes, and realise that it was just a dream.

Thank you for reading!!