Where Waiting Lives
It was one dusky evening.
I stood at my balcony,
The weather whispering secrets in a chill breeze
Beautiful, cold, and a little stormy,
The kind of weather that makes you feel
Everything you've been avoiding.
Despite the wind howling like a wounded beast,
I picked up my sketchbook.
Perhaps it was the ache of missing someone
That made my fingers itch for graphite and stillness.
Lost in the waves of my thoughts,
My eyes caught her
A girl standing on the other side of the road.
She wasn’t just pretty.
She was ethereal.
Words shrank in her presence.
Dressed in soft yellow, elegant as Jessica
From The Merchant of Venice,
She held an umbrella,
And in her other hand
Letters, trembling like captured butterflies.
Her eyes…
They were anchored to the road,
Expectant, alive with quiet desperation.
Each passing bike, every humming car,
Lit up her face with hope
A fleeting sunrise.
But as soon as she saw
It wasn't him,
The light faded.
Dimmed like a lantern at dawn.
Somewhere deep in me, I knew
She was waiting.
And waiting never ends well.
Ask Majnu, Romeo
The Beast in his cursed castle,
Or even Sleeping Beauty in her silence.
Waiting is a slow dagger,
Twisting gently with time.
And then
crack!
The thunder roared.
Rain descended, sudden and sharp,
Like nature itself had broken into sobs.
I rushed inside, gathering my papers,
My sketches still wet with memory.
But when I returned to grab the last sheet
She was still there.
Still waiting.
But changed.
The streetlamp flickered on, casting golden halos.
Her yellow dress shimmered like a star fallen to Earth
But now...
I saw what the shadows had hidden.
Bruises painted her cheeks
A bandage kissed her wrist
She sat on the bench,
Clutching the letters to her chest
As though they held her together.
The ink on them blurred,
Washing away like fading memories.
Just like her hope.
It broke me.
Truly broke me.
To watch her sit there,
Wanting to scream louder than the thunder,
But trapped in the prison of silence.
The rain fell,
Hard as stone,
Sharp as needles,
But it was nothing
Compared to the storm inside her.
The wind caught her papers,
Scattering them like broken promises.
She didn’t chase them.
She didn’t move.
Drenched, silent
She just stopped crying.
And now...
The girl who once looked like a stanza of light
Had become a silhouette of sorrow.
A lifeless figure,
A story with no breath left in it.
The streetlamp blinked,
Then died.
The night swallowed her whole.
And just like that...
The story ended there.
Copyright © Krishika Upadhyay | Year Posted 2025
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