She sat on the sidewalk, the tears falling down in a constant flow, the ground soaking them up as soon as they hit the surface. She did not look up as she felt the stares of the world, drilling into her. There wasn’t much left to her in any case. She felt torn, humiliated and there was a big gaping hole where her heart had been.
He sat on a bench nearby, looking at her and wondering who had had the heart to make such a pretty girl cry. He cursed silently, when he saw another of those drops running down her pale cheeks, wishing that he could go and wipe them away. But he knew that the world didn’t work that way anymore, no matter what his Moral Science teacher back in school had tried to teach them.
Days passed into weeks and months. The seasons changed but the look on the girl’s face didn’t change. She hardly noticed it when the dry leaves fell to the dusty ground and swirled around her feet. The breeze blew through her soft tangles, wisps of hair on her forehead, near her eyes. She sighed softly to her self sometimes, as if unconscious of the world around.
He gazed on, her dazed look only sinking him deeper into the melancholic mood he was in. He looked at the way she sat, looking for a distant sign in the faces of the strangers who passed her by. He noticed beauty in the dark circles beneath her eyes, marks of another night she had spent staring at the ceiling. He saw strength in that frail frame that looked as if a gust of wind could blow her away. He saw life and hope in those dull and dead eyes. He saw the nobody she had become and longed to be able to bring her back to the somebody she had been.
She brought a book with her sometimes, hardly reading more than a line or two though. She often wondered why he didn’t return. Was it her or was it him? and then she would sink back into the thoughts that she would awaken from, to read the line that she had been reading for the past week. She would brighten when she saw someone with a familiar hairstyle or similar features, thinking it was him and her eyes would become dead again when she realised that it wasn’t him, coming to take her back with him. And then evening would come and she would get up, to walk the lonely way back home once more.
He often wondered why he wasn’t able to muster up the courage to upto her and talk to her. He watched as another day ended and she got up to go home.
She sat in the park today, closer to him. as she watched the children swinging with glee, chasing each other and taking full advantage of the cloudy day, realisation began to dawn on her that a chapter of her life had ended and that life was moving on without her, even if she didn’t want to move on with it. Her life was a mess and she knew that she would have to build another ship if she wanted to withstand the many other storms that life would throw at her.
He could bear it no more. As he watched her eyes begin to come alive again, he walked upto her and sat on the bench she was sitting on. He said, “The clouds will part one day and the sun will shine.” As she looked at him startled, she saw an average looking man, whose eyes were filled with relief for her that made her realise that maybe physical features weren’t everything. They began talking and he told her how vulnerable and tired she had looked eight months back. And then she spoke and he listened.
And when the sun came out from behind the dark clouds and began to shine with cleansing warmth, she knew that she had moved on.
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