The Letter To Nobody

The Letter to Nobody

Dearest,

It is cold today. After a week-long heat wave, the bay area has cooled down. It even rained the other day - what a treat!

The rain has clarified the skies. I didn’t know the blue of the Californian skies could be any bluer. But they could. They have: And they remind me of home.

I am inundated with assignments. I read most of the afternoons. I don’t remember my eyelids being tired this way. This tiredness is new to me, as are the golden sycamore leaves, the souvenirs of autumn. My first fall in the US, tired from reading stories all day long.

Fall.

Such a terse, poetic name for a weather.

You were startled by my admiration when I first admitted it to you. I suspect it struck you as incorrect. In a way, you were right.

Why should the spring buds admire the fall? Why should they indulge in the promise of death, decay, falling?

Fall.

It is relaxing just to even pronounce it out loud. My muscles groan. In the distant skies, the clouds have thinned out into round patches that look like doily. I smile. I always wanted to learn crocheting. I know I never will. But I will look at doilies and I will look at doily-looking clouds and tell myself I wanted to learn crocheting. Why do I do this? Who am I lying? And I am not even lying. I would like to learn crocheting but only if life was a little longer than it is. I shift my gaze back to my screen. Words. I love them.

Rustle. Why do I have to be distracted like this?

A swarm of desiccated sycamore leaves. It is cute that they always travel in a band. My windowsill is their nestling place. The specters of autumn.

Is this a goodbye? Are you here to say goodbye?

I say goodbye out loud. The leaves receive my idiocy with solemn indifference.

Indifference. You pretended but you couldn’t be half as indifferent as these leaves.

I never understood why you, with all your appetite for the unknown, should be threatened by the admiration. But admiration is threatening. In old french, it means to regard the person in awe.

It is threatening to be regarded with awe. What if we couldn’t live up to it? What if our existence contaminates someone’s pool of awe? Will we be able to live with so much guilt?

I understand you better now. Now that you are gone.

You indeed disappointed me. You faltered when it mattered the most. You betrayed my trust more than once.

Strangely enough, life is setting up a reverse drama for me. I have a far younger boy approach me with the admiration I had for you. And I feel burdened. I try to tell him that this is stupid. And it is. I know it is, because I have been stupid. But he persists. He brings me tea and chocolates.

I am waiting to break his heart. But that is the only way forward. Doesn’t mean I didn’t care for him. I want him to fly higher.

You are dead. Every day, life teaches me how/why to forgive you. I forgive you. One carelessness a day. You were also petty. Just like me. None of us can rise higher than our fears. At least, not all at once.

I forgave you this today - your suspicion of me.

- bhushita

More Posts from Aakritisitaulaa and Others

aakritisitaulaa

2 years ago

Our Lost Love.

And I wonder, if, maybe it was another time, another world, we could be together. The love that was destroyed could bloom like those beautiful flowers of spring. I don't know why we met when we weren't destined to be together. You were like sun after the storms that slowly faded in the night. The water in desert that eventually dried. The friend that I was searching in others, I found in you. But we are gone now. We are lost inbetween the patches of the wound which was supposed to heal the scar. And still I will find you again. And again our stories will be written and we'll stand in the rain together looking at each other's eye. And finally at another time and another world we will have eachother. Our lost love will be there forever.

-august.