The Yellow December Melancholy
There is a corpulent weight that two hearts have to bear when one of them slips out of love. The way fingers touch one last time. In a periodic fashion, like the touch and the intoxication after would last forever. The lips start quivering and eyes start trembling. There is a sudden flow of December warmth into your cold veins. Both of your hands are so close and yet so far. You want to squeeze his palms and align your heart in the direction of his footsteps, but you are repelling. Moving away like an upset magnet, aren’t you? The sun pierces into the room and fills the deepest void you’ve ever had since you loved a boy years ago. Your voice equivocates every time he slides his arm over your waist while sleeping. Your breaths are no longer music played on violin; it becomes a terrific hoarse scream with uneven frequencies reverberating into your ears. You wan to hold his almond-shaped face and bring your lips close to his forehead. You want him to shift and switch his hands from your waist to your hair. But you are afraid of him hearing the screams, and bellows that have started to deafen you. You want to kiss endlessly as sun holes into your skin, but memories keep making their way back to you and your head.
What a tragedy is to be in love with someone who remembers you like a poet and not a poem. There are corners of the city you try to live in, so frequently visited that they are now landmarks for couples in love. The kind of love that is ought to shred away, fade like white, milky clouds. You are falling out of love with the man you once loved. His breath over your lips feels like a nucleus, gravitating all the emotions into him. You don’t want to love him but you don’t want to unlove him too. You try to get up, and move away but the hold tightens around you and his minty breath nuzzles into the space between your shoulders and neck. His fingers tickle your skin, over your arms and you find the plains there turning into plateaus. Dried and dusted all over. The velocity with which your eyes rain is unfathomable, isn’t it? There is an ocean full of Agha Ali’s poems and you drown with every step you take.
December draws its curtains and a frozen sunshine fills your heart with an emptiness by your side. The hands over waist and tingles over your skin suddenly vanishes. There is no poem and no ocean. You are back, lying over a draught patch of earth. There are words inscribed in your throat but no friction for them to walk out of your lips. It is December again. A strange kind of fire ablaze you as you write about a boy you loved and a man who loved you. None of them stayed.
About the writer:
I am Rakshita Tripathi, a third year CSE student, specialising in Data Science and Analysis. When not reading, I am usually trying a new book out in a bookstore. I think my world can be precisely condensed into everything between Urdu and literature. You can find her on Instagram @deodaree.in