For You: A Story Of Love, Loss And An Endless Wait

By Shradha S:

Here in the streets, a whiff of fresh air is a rarity. It’s always the smell of dead animals and rotting people. It makes me go back to the memory of that afternoon when you and I sat near those yellow meadows we grew up in. How mother used to tie those lovely yellow ribbons on your lovelier curls. How I used to love running my fingers through them.

Where I study, here in town, people are from a lot of places. We have no common ground, apart from being students of dusty old History. The professors and readers are important men of no business. The place has no story or breeze; as if you are caught in that moment of a lifetime, where an impending doom is slowly making its way up the stairs, while innocent joy is leaving quietly through your backdoor. I try to read in the afternoons but fall asleep after a chapter, and dream without fail, of the yellow sunflower fields in the country, and you in your yellow dress.

I miss the warm sunshine on our faces. A time when father used to be home during the spring with apples and strawberries in baskets and carts, and Bruno attacking them both with his puppy woofs. I wonder why life has to be so grey and people so dark, when everything around us is so simple and sweet. Like the blush you had on your face the first time you were kissed.

When I first met him, and walked by his side, I thought my life was in a bloom once again. That long past winter was gone finally and life was embracing the sweet spring. I thought that the war which took you my little one, father, mother and Bruno, could be finally forgiven and forgotten.

Destiny is too cruel to smile upon my fair Fate. Who I loved and cherished once again in the yellow summers was lost in the winter, next. He was taken away by another war which thought itself better than its former self. And once again I was left to the miseries of the living ones. Further tortured by the task of documenting that which stabbed my heart once, twice, thrice and many times. Typing copies of the same heart wrenching story of love and loss, which was merely a state archive for the ones who rule. A silly matter of typos and tears.

Years have gone. I still keep the memory of our yellow afternoons alive in my old heart. When walking by the same old street with the ancient smell of flesh and blood, nobody bothers the old woman who lives alone down the street, in her yellow rooms. Some day, when fate takes pity and death plays ally; we shall be reunited, in those yellow meadows of ours, sister. Singing our songs.

“Fare thee well, my own true love. Oh don’t you see that lonesome dove, sitting on an ivy tree, she’s weeping for her own true love, just as I shall weep for mine.”