Just Friends -2

Just Friends-1

We lived in our exquisite world, scarce of outsiders.Like we had been caged between parentheses. Him and I. He was my last refuge from love. No, I didn't love him. He was the man I ended up with, after hope left me, love failed me. Almost two years of time, felt like a lost layer of life, in afterthought. When he was with me, I engaged untiringly in the process of convincing myself that, it was not him, it was not anyone. After he made a quiet unexpected exit, without an explanation, I was shocked. During our last days I was coaxing myself to believe in the possibility of a life sans him. Later, I gave up. I missed him. Though he left, he probably never did. He became this vague outline of his previous person, my friend, and constantly loitered around my conscious.

We never believed in gifts though, me being the girl, sometimes he pitied my faint craving to be gifted something, anything. Once on the walk back to the hostel, he had plucked out a few wild lilies, tied them with my hair band, put in a few leaves and handed it over to me and started laughing like  he would collapse any moment. It was my birthday, nineteenth. I smiled too. But to make things even, I bought him an ash tray with skeletons and skulls on it, just to remind him that every time he smoked, he was indeed moving closer to becoming one of those skulls. I don't know if he uses it still. Or may be his girlfriend made him quit. I don't know. Has he moved on? I apparently have, now that I'm married.

We didn't call each other except for a first few times. I used to ask him about his art, the reason why he quit college, or so he told me, I never believed him though. I had always loved to watch him paint, how the random colors on his canvas took shapes, and how he never even distantly considered my suggestions for his work. And to avenge that, I never let him read my poems. He mustn't have had the slightest idea what I wrote about. Sometimes, many times, I wrote about him. Things might have been different, had he known. Or, I don't know.

7 comments:

Surya Prakash V said...

The word "movies" caught my attention - what about them?
it woke me up ..

The destination always puts off the wanderer - one who wants everything is close to needing nothing - one who asks for "one" thing derives pleasure in it's negation. Intensity is just another word.

arvind said...

the first - always made a deep cut within us.. coming out of that - need a lot of patience..

(her husband expired just 6 months back.. the pain is immense.. tough ask!)

Blasphemous Aesthete said...

'Had I said that, had I done this,
So might I gain, so might I miss.
Might she have loved me? just as well
She might have hated, who can tell!'


Nostalgic post. Beautifully done.

Anonymous said...

awww...so nicely written :)

D2 said...

I find it best not to think about how things might have been. Nostalgia is hard to get get rid of and too easy to stick around enough to make you sick.

wildflower said...

BA
those a beautiful lines..

Anonymous
Oh-is-that-so

D2
r8 :(

aria said...

I think after actually moving on or moving away the past acquires a rare vividness...
wonderfully written .. :D