The Last Five Senses '1
By~Krish
I opened my eyes
and the air was a still lake
that would no longer ripple for me.
My breath was a whisper,
a moth beating tired wings
against the glass of existence.
They stood beside me,
their tears pooling like rain
in the fragile valleys beneath their eyes,
and I knew,
by the tremor in their silence,
that I was already leaning
across the border of life.
The rhythm machine sang
its slow, mechanical song
beep… …
…beep
each note falling heavier,
as if the sound itself
were sinking into the floor.
I could hear the footsteps
beyond the white door,
soft thuds like cautious heartbeats
from strangers in another world.
And then
the tide of my consciousness began to retreat.
I floated, weightless,
between a darkness that hummed like midnight rivers
and a light that breathed like morning clouds.
It was calm.
It was the kind of peace
that tucks you in without asking
if you are ready to sleep.
Through the haze,
trees appeared
the neem trees at the gates of my school,
their leaves whispering the same green gossip
they’d told the wind decades ago.
I stepped forward.
The air was the same
sharp and herbal,
as if it had bottled time in its scent.
It was quiet noisy
the buzz of distant laughter,
the creak of swings,
the shuffle of school shoes
folded together like an untuned orchestra.
And then...
I saw him.
Every sound died
as if the world had bitten its own tongue.
The only note left
was my heartbeat,
thudding like a slow drum in a vast canyon.
He walked toward me
a bouquet cradled in his hands,
tulips,
pure white,
so soft they looked as if clouds had bent down
to bloom in his arms.
His eyes were bright galaxies,
his gaze a thread
pulling me closer.
He called my name,
and his voice ...
oh, his voice ...
was spun sugar melting in sunlight.
He was the most tender soul
I had ever met.
But somewhere inside me
a truth whispered:
This is not real.
Because on that birthday
I had gone home early,
and he had never found me here.
I realized
perhaps he had waited for hours
by the school gate,
flowers trembling in his grasp,
searching the crowd for a face
that never came.
And as my thoughts rippled with guilt,
the air around us emptied.
The noise of the playground
slid off into nothing.
We stood alone,
just him and me,
in the schoolyard of memory.
“The tale has only unwrapped its first tear...the rest still shimmers in the silence ahead.”
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