-- My First Love --
"WHY?"
I rethink putting an abnormal emphasis on the
mind. No. There is no need to ask for more "whys?" I had her fair and square. It was time I had learnt to let go of her. She would be better off. Happy! Well, almost happy. I am human after all and like all humans I too reason to have her all by myself.
"Impossible!" my conscience taunts my bitter thoughts. "Self-less! Your self-less. You accept defeat. You embrace defeat. Lost! That is exactly where you are." My conscience seems to have betrayed me. I lye, facing the roof of my empty apartment. The sun is majestically viewing earth as a predicament of yesteryears where neither Romeos’ nor Juliets’, Heers’ nor Ranjhas’, Shah Jehans’ nor Anarkalis’ conquered; they simply lost battles they could not afford to prevail. Society labeled them simply as, "Hopeless Romantics," forgetting their inability to survive alone. An inane disease, we all as human beings suffer from.
Maybe my dreams will spare me of the grief that tomorrow may bring, for she was my first love. For
you were
my first love!
I find myself foolishly grinning at an insane plague that keeps biting off little pieces of my brain. I perceive so because I embrace peace I have found in talking to my ex-lover or what better way to put it then by naming her as my official "ex-." I assume she speaks well even though she has a way of twisting my
words, my thoughts, my actions. I’m afraid she has a way of twisting everything about me. I can only marvel in confusion. As mesmerizing as it is, I consider myself lost. Vanished within time, I almost feel like a ghost. The phantom within me smiles gallantly. In fact I’m a little surprised at how things seem to have worked out. This fixture is supposedly far from reality. Uncertainty embeds me to self-reconsideration. I silently reassure myself. The feeling that my conscience can never betray me has opened up more opportunities for me than the last few years have. The business hasn’t sky-rocketed like I had hoped it would. My personal life suffers. The responsibilities dispensed onto my meek shoulders after my father died have made me a juvenile man. As I sit here recalling the accident, my father’s scent returns to me like the spring brings the familiar aroma to a polluted city like Lahore every year. I quickly pound to my feet and walk steadily to shake the memories away from my neural pathway. It feels like a caterpillar poisoning my cranium and I can only manage to allure serenity by thinking about
her. I commit myself to reminiscence as my thumb casually finds its way to my lower lip, where my two-eye teeth nibble ponderously. I believe my inner
voice can never lead me astray. Maybe I’m
wrong. I’m no god.
I think I''m wrong. How can something so bitter taste so sweet?
How can evil be so kind?
How can ecstasy be this hard to find?
How can "I," ever fall in love?
How?
To be completely honest, I have a way of flabbergasting my speech in a way that leaves her and I in vindictive mystery. It is for this specific treason that I consolidate mercy for everyone else than the only person who claims to have
truly loved me. It is she who inspires me to my broken pieces of literature. I recognize a surreal humiliation as I try triumphantly to remember mentioning it to her. Even though my efforts go in vain; I feel sorrow, a jolt. A physical jolt of excruciating pain. The enormity of this statement can never be misleading to a man who’s been through it all. As the morning slips through the night and as the sun flicks its tongue across the tender horizon I begin to collect the dispersed bits ofhis puzzle. These mind games have undermined my aspirations, my choices and my desire to be with the one I love. I feel like I’m twelve again; back at primary school where buoyant children would play "cat and mouse," at the instinctive orders of the vexed "Sports Teacher". With her there is no significant role. You’re an actor in a play. A cartoon in an animated movie. A disfigured action figure on the 3-D screen of a child’s video game. But "Cat and Mouse," would always be the most preferable for you and I.
Do you believe that if you took a trip on another path of this forsaken life you would have still met the same people?
Would you have been the same person?
Does everything happen for a goddamned reason? "Destiny!"
Maybe some times we need illogical explanations to find comfort. Unreasonable theories can perhaps help lift our souls from stagnation of our mentally stable minds. Inertness is hurt and sorrows can make a man weak. I deem I have met her for the all right reasons and possibly for a few wrong. My mind and soul unite as one and I’m in utter bliss to have a known a "woman," in all her glory. The metamorphosis of a "girl," into a "woman," is breathtakingly surreal. This is of course in a non-sexual or in a physical way. The state of her mind leaves me tangled between words I thought I would say and words I could not say. It leaves me speechless. "Tongue-tied," I think to myself rolling out my tongue to display my aboriginal genes.
"Sarah?" I break the ear deafening silence in the
phone.
"Yeah," she calmly inquires.
"Are we
meeting this Saturday?" I ask her with rather unfamiliar enthusiasm.
"Ah! No I don’t think so." She blatantly replies.
"Why?" I squeak. Over running the tone of my breaking voice I ask again in a rather nonchalant manner, "Why?"
"Ali!" Her tone of voice suggested that the answer was more than obvious. I had asked the wrong question,
once again. I had dared to prick her nerves.
"What?" I manage to reply as callous as possible.
"There’s no point in us meeting. Com’on what are we going to do? And besides I’m practically a married woman now!" She was right. There was no point. There’s never a point. But we could meet without a point like we’ve always met.
"Talk?" I ignited the flames of my uncanny wit. "And you aren’t married as yet," I whispered to disapprove of the idea itself, "Hold on to your horses girl, it’s a long ride ahead!" I chuckled.
"No I’ll get bored," she unsympathetically breathed into the ear phone.
"Bored? You don’t seem bored over the phone," I was repulsed by the malice in her voice.
"Ali, we can always talk over the phone but meeting publicly is awkward." She wasn’t right. It was wrong of her to have said that. Comparatively speaking there’s always the "X," factor when you meet. Not that I had any indecent intentions. Well I’m not a sinner, but I’m not noble either. I am a man and like all men, my mind had strayed down that road of an unpredictable urge. The urge to have gone beyond the limits of a
friend.
"I''m her
friend."The very thought awakens me to the authenticity of this innocent
relationship. It hit me like a car, a bus, a train, I’m not rather too certain. But the sting of awakening reality brought me back to my senses. The sense of her scent. The sense of her touch. The sense of her breath against my cheek.
A Friend!
"Why is it awkward? I''m not going to rape you," I joked. (Laughs)
"I think I can take care of myself." She was serious. (Silence)
"And by the way you don’t even have the guts to do that. I mean you didn’t even do it when I was openly willing for you to do it," she manifestly rejoiced.
"Shut-up! That’s not even the point. Come. Please." I found myself begging like a hungry dog for a bone.
"I’ll think over it." As careless of my potential to keep going, Sarah remained impossibly adamant. Almost certainly, I think I was unaware of her potential to pro
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