reconciliation- short story

Posted on | January 11, 2010 | Comments Off

(Aching across time, we live in an endless void- you and I. There was a past once, in this void, but now there is nothing- shared memories float in the streets like derelict pieces of paper carrying upon them the scripts of endless designs, plans, and projections- abandoned futures. The void is like a ghost town where our presence is just a rumor, and time flows like the knitting of a confused spinster- forward and back upon itself in different colored patterns without necessarily having any sense or determinate shape.)

How are you?

I am fine. And you?

Just like I look. Its been a long time. You have grown even thinner, if possible.

I know. You have not put on any weight neither. I bet your husband measures his inches everyday.

…

Ok. Wrong joke, wrong time. Sorry. You know how I am.

…

You have not changed. Still those silences.

You never listened to them.

(You know, you and me always lived in a perennial state of reproach- you could never bear to have me silent, and I could never say something which did not make you go silent- personally, if you ask me, I think silences are overrated- I would prefer you bawling me out this very moment to a million years of silence, but you never do. Never did. Perhaps, that’s why…)  …

You are not looking well.

Well, I was never…much of a looker, was I? Still…maybe you are right. You were always a good judge.

Do you always have to be so bitter? Its been long since we me. Do you still write poetry?

(Bitterness is there, I admit. Its not directed at you, my life- its directed at myself who could not keep you there. Or maybe at a God who pushed us away- but then I do not believe in Him, and so it must have been me- have you ever imagined how lonely it grows at times- at nights when you are lying alone in the dark, weeping your dry tears and reciting poetry to yourself or too tired or too splashed or too scared to switch on the lights lest you see your face, sobbing tearlessly, silently, trying to write a poem, trying to be bitter, hoping that there was a God somewhere, no, WISHING that there was a God somewhere and that He came between us like some jealous lover and He pulled you away from me- juggling words in the night that offer no forgiveness, just an endless alphabet-drowned deafening silence in a suffocating dark that is almost too noisy to bear? Did you know I have started eating chocolates and quit smoking? I still remember the taste of all those chocolates I went ‘ugh’ over, and I still hear you voice complaining over the number of mints I ate- yes, you were right, of course, I only took a mint when I smoked. Yes, my love, I still do write poetry). Err, yes…sometimes. Now that’s all I do- I write poems for a living.

Wow!! So finally you have a job doing what you always loved. That’s so cool, no?

(Yes, my darling, yes. Its pretty cool. Some people even think its pretty how, being a poet, you know- in those late night rave parties where I sometimes am dragged to like a rare specimen, an endangered species, a beast brought forward for inspection- the wild, vacant eyed almost-teenagers who gawk at me as if I just landed with the little green men down in the garden, the vacuous twenty somethings who try to reconcile the fact that I am a poet with the fact that I don’t have a beard, don’t wear heavy spectacles and no, no khadi, neither- yes, my love, its pretty cool. Sometimes, I do have to wonder where the rent for the next month will come, or whether the water in the seedy studio I live in is fit enough to drink- but those one-time girls who come there sometimes think that is pretty cool, too. So, yeah, the light of my life, I am pretty happy). Ohh, err yes, that’s cool, really.  You tell me- do you still teach them children English literature?

Ohh me? Yeah…I do teach still. The children have grown a bit bigger. A lot bigger, in fact. I teach college students, now- English literature, yes- and by the look of things, they need to be taught alphabets and grammar too. But yes, we try. So, a poet, huh? I bet you never married.

(Oh no, I never did. But not for any of  the reasons going through your mind right now.) Actually, no. How about you?

Err, no. Listen I have a class I am getting delayed for. Lucky we met in this seminar, do try to keep in touch, okay. I must leave.

(Yes, my darling, I will keep in touch. Perhaps you did not notice that with this exhortation to keep in touch, you did not give m a single contact detail- your phone number or email address or anything. But yes, I will always be in touch with you- in all those silent nights, whenever I close my eyes and let the blackness wash over myself, whenever I have a million people around me and am all alone- we will always be in touch, my love.) Sure. Will do. You take care. Bye.

Bye. (You never did understand, did you, my love? I know all the reasons you give, and know all about the silent, black darkness which washes over you noisier than a tempestuous sea, I know of the empty flat in which you spend you emptier evenings, of the bleak unkemptness which is hidden behind your neat, clean-shaven, shiny-shod exterior. But you have to get over it, my darling, why the hell are you men so weak? Did you not notice I asked you to keep in touch but gave you no contact details- no phone numbers, no email ids, no addresses nothing? I don’t want you agonizing in the night hunched in the dark, the light from your phone’s LED washing your face, agonizing, dialing my number and cutting the call before it gets through, awash in your guilt and mine? You never understood the silences, or maybe you always did, just chose not to tell me. But there is nothing now, my love, no past, no present, no future. There is just this void, a gaping, silent, mocking void which is so dark it is almost noisy, in which we- you and I- reside, at opposite ends, looking for each other, silently screaming each other’s name, our frantic need echoing across our souls for we are void in which we live, and love, and this loneliness is where we will die, this ravaged remnant of conscience- hoping that we will find each other, wishing that we would not. I love you, my sweet. You never understood, I can still taste the taste of all those chocolates you went ‘ugh’ over- did you know I have stopped eating chocolates? And learnt how to smoke? Perhaps you could tell, from my lips, maybe- bet you have quit. But I have to go, and so do you need to go, because we will always have each other. But we will never have us. So, my love, go find yourself a groupie, if you can, of other loves, if possible. Or a job and slow decay into death, if you so wish. We are too tired for our realities, now, and our souls are weary of love. But still, my sweet, I love you.)

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