5 Minute Reads | Anthology

Dear Time by Shehlath

by Shehlath 

  Dear Time,

Seems just yesterday when we all returned with dirt covering our clothes, as if we just won a war.

I wrote a letter to death. I wrote a letter to love. But why do my eyes sting while I write to you? What is so touching, heart shattering that makes my heart weep in isolation?

There is this corner in my brain. There are no lights or lamps in that portion. It is always silent and waiting for me to stumble across it. Always brooding in its own secrecy till my forgotten cells try to prey and prod the dead irritation away. And as I write to you now, I can feel myself walking towards it with an only candle flickering in my hand.

Millions and millions of pictures and videos decorate the wall in this corner. This dark gloomy place which never had any lights put up, any lamps put up, was slowly making my heart go numb. Why am I constantly talking about this place when I should be talking about you instead? Because my dear time, these pictures are your footprints. All over this wide space in the back of my mind, I see your faded marks.

And as I write to you, my eyes still sting with a pain so indescribable for it almost seems beautiful. Is it possible to love pain? With you, yes.

My eyes glance over to all of the stories you wrote and deleted in my life, which are all hung up in pictures on this dead decaying wall of mine.

That day when me and my three cousins, close as siblings, all together rode a single motorbike to the Mc Donald's. The first time I ate a burger. That new year night the whole of our family sat on the terrace with a huge fire between. We were all there, present and alive with this burning rage of living. That night all of us slept on the floor with a mount of blankets. That day I won a poetry competition for the first and last time till now. All those occasional crushes and celebrity stalking are flashed in pictures. That day we danced with our sixth grade teacher.

How weird would you count it if you saw me crying and smiling at the same time? Where did all of this go?

You must be laughing at me right now because you are a heartless monster apparently, who gulps down any kind of happiness we are provided with. But how come this provider is you then?

I know. That's why I don't hate you.

You are a teacher. A teacher so in love with teaching and the understanding of its students that a small hurdle as pain and guilt can't stop you. You have know all the pain, all the troubles of this world all along and it's necessary for us to learn them one by one. And that's exactly what you are doing. You don't heal wounds. All the chunks of hearts you took away are constantly being replaced by a piece of your own. You break yourself into a million pieces so as to fill in the wide gap you've left at places.

I know this because I've studied you. Your pattern of givens snatching away from us in order to make us smooth with this. In order to teach us to live from the beginning once again.

So once again I say, you don't heal our wounds.
You teach us to live with it.