Blur...

I could very well choose to quit; to not hold on to your silky laugh that filled the nights we spent together, and to let go of the memory that keeps fresh the lemon and thyme smell of your wet washed hair. You were wearing a crepe cotton chemise, and I tied on your neck the gunmetal pendant that I had bought to name the sunlight of your eyes. On your lips was the same song that we rehearsed for our first duet together. My notes and your voice, commingled in the symphony, trying to vanish within the other. And when our lips had met for the first time, I could swear I heard the same song playing silently in the recesses of my mind.

I could let go of all that, but I still have the watercolor that you painted, hanging in the living room. The early morning sunlight bathes it everyday and for the first few hours, it almost comes alive. And I have my charcoal sketch of you from the first time we made love. The creases on the crushed bedspread, the faint smell of our sweat infused with the rajnigandha outside the baywindow, and your unruly locks; all that elude the canvas but are trapped within the memories, I could leave behind that too.

But I wont. I would rather be the floaters in your eyes as they scan the skies on a clear sunny winter afternoon. Transparent, but there. In the blur of the promises that we made, and never could keep, I will exist. And maybe on one of the nights when he makes love to you, a draught of wind with traces of a redolent rajnigandha will drift into your bedroom, and perhaps remind you of me.

You see, hope is such a bitch!