Life Moved On

People just stare on as he walked with tears fighting with his eyes to gush out. They don’t bother to ask him what’s wrong. He walks without looking where he’s going, he doesn’t know himself where he’s going. The world seems like it’s not bothered in the least but he keeps on walking, brushing elbows with people. On he goes trying to find some place alone, some place secluded. Every corner he takes there are people lingering. He takes yet another turn and finds a dark place, strewn with rubbish and with a small broken stool atop. With blurry eyes he walks there and sits down. Tip tip tip drops water from a broken pipe above him but he doesn’t even notice as his jacket is slowly getting damp with it. As he sits down he surrenders to the might of the tears and breaks down. So hard he cries that his throat begins to ache and his stomach convulses but he doesn’t mind the pain. Pain is good. Hurt is good he keeps on telling himself. He looks at his hands and is surprised to see they are clean. Weren’t they covered with blood when he left? But his tears are so powerful they make him forget what he was thinking. Another surge of memories hit him and the tears begin to pour down again. In the past few hours everything had changed. There was smiles and laughter everywhere. It started to rain but he didn’t notice as he got soaked in it. The tip tip of the broken water pipe merged with the rain. It seemed that everything was turning against him now. He groped into his pocket to find a handkerchief. He fumbled in his pocket and instead of the handkerchief he found something else. He took it out; a picture with its colors blurred by the rain. He saw someone strikingly familiar and wiped away the tears from his eyes to focus on the picture. Next to him was someone very familiar but because of the rain and the tears he couldn’t make out who it was. He turned the picture around and saw the year. April of 1998. He was around fifteen years old then. And then it hit him. The girl in the picture was someone he knew very well. And when he realized who it was he lost all strength to hold that picture and it fell down his hands into the puddle of rain water already piling up. Just hours ago that girl had died in his arms. That explained the blood he kept seeing on his hands. That explained what was happening. His mind had become so clogged with everything that happened that he couldn’t think properly. He remembered every single moment now. She died in his arms. And he lost control. He started crying harder than ever again. The broken stool, the puddle, the broken pipe, the rubbish, all of it slowly faded away and was replaced with darkness. And he fell down the broken stool into the muddy puddle of water. The people kept strolling along, not noticing a man fallen down in that dark alley. They failed to notice the man who’s wife’s funeral they had attended just hours ago. Life moved on.

Break-Down

Is it true that everyone in this world wants to be lied to? Or is it just that everybody is actually living a lie? And that whatever they do in all honesty is in fact a lie as a whole? If we truly are living a lie then where is that truth and honesty everybody keeps hollering about? Don’t they realize that everything they do is pretentious, fallacious to the core? Maybe this the only way we survive. Maybe this is because I end up at the receiving end each time. Maybe this is because everything always comes crashing down on me. Do I need something or someone to keep pushing me ahead? My heart beat doubles, I start trembling. Is this even normal? Am I just a sick person? Where do I get all these answers from? I feel the urge to cry but I can’t. Is this because I have lost the emotional value of the tears in my eyes or is it just because I’ve become indifferent to the world around me? Do I need someone to remind me of the sentiments involved in the act of crying or am I well off without tears at all? It seems I’m fostering these two contrasting personalities in one body. I smile on such small, mundane things. Such small, infinitesimal, minute details attract me, excite me. And likewise, it is these small, read between the lines things that hurt me the most. It’s like a trickledown effect, killing me each time.