The light from the laptop screen blinded me from looking anywhere else. Light was spread to every corner of the room, just not bright enough for me.
My sister slept beside me, her head slightly visible from under the sheets. The days events had taken its toll on her as she lay motionless, both of her arms to her chest, crossed over and still. Occasionally she made turns, but almost invisible in the darkness of the room.
I shifted from my idle position to take a sip of the bottle kept beside me, obviously the courtesy of her.
I peeked a little at her again from within that little amount of light that my face reflected on her. Forcing my eyes to subside any of the noise that followed, I finally managed to look at her cuddled up self. She had now shrunken to a crouched up mass, in a way lifeless.
But in the whisper of the air and the silence of the wind, I was able to hear some faintly audible breathing. Not mine though, I would have known.
I kept the bottle down and again stared into the the blank page on my laptop, like every other night for the past week. It’s like the ideas are only a kiss away, but I’m not able to take that last leap of faith. A fear crouches over me, and all I’m left with is that blank page.
I decide I needed some air, and where else to go other than the rooftop garden. But even nature is my enemy when there’s no sun to look over me. The moon never did like me, hated my guts. Once I dared to look over the stary sky back in my village, a night to remember, and its been since then that it stopped talking to me, telling me stories and adventure, even the whisper is all gone now.
All I’m left with are these unexpressed pages that secretly reflect the state of my heart. It stopped bleeding that day when I found something greater than me, kind of an inspiration. And then pain stopped being my friend.
My sister turns in her sleep, mumbling something like a name, or a title. I couldn’t tell, listening to the silence of the night had tired me already, she was only a necessary addition to that, but invisible still.
My laptop beeps, its waiting limit all gone now. A message flashes, but I was too drowsed up to have made any moves. I sit silently, looking over the periodic visibility of that single vertical line that reminded me of my inability to imagine. I watch it taunt me, flaunt its capability and my handicap of that same old memorandum.
Another message flashes, maybe the last call for me. And I again look around, towards places faintly visible, and those that lightened up through the bridge that my memories create. The lavish maroon of my shelves call me to look back to another time, my books to my right cheer for me to bring in another mate, and that empty page at the back of my drawer, safely hidden for the past 5 years, smirks at me.
They should.It had been the same old thing in the same old ways, only time has never been the same.
I force those lazy legs out of bed, my body still sleepy and static. The drawer on the 2nd shelf opens up, probably for the first time in such a long time. I smuggle my hand to the back, the tip of my fingers searching for a page, a bit rotten and nostalgic.
The yellow shade and the mildly torn edges brought forth a punch of emotions that had been pushed away into the forgotten shelves that were thought too out of time. But time had always been defiant for art, only never easily acceptable.
I bring it close to my lips, the texture pressing into the trough between the two crescent structures, its scent indulging another stream of nostalgic emotions that had been pushed back long ago.
My legs automatically move towards the cupboard on the other end of the room. A case lay untouched, unscathed. No dust over it, just shreds of soul and creativity pressed into its carcass. The dead tell their secrets, better than those living, and that night proved it.
The page found its home, and my fingers found the stroke of keys whose voice echoed through my ears, its smell raging fire within me, in my memories. And in that moment, I was one with that typewriter. In that moment, everything dispersed. Even the moon seemed to like me back, accept me, and let the whisper and the silence talk to me, bring me tales of the secrets that that vertical taunting line never did.
In that moment, only the symphony of night existed, and I was back in the cuddle of imagination.
·stories