She
I hummed a lullaby. She lay on her bed, her hair messy, unkept. Aishwarya hated it when I sang. She said it horrified her. However, she read my poems. She told me how she fantasized whilst she read my erotic works. She would shyly add that it would turn her on. We never made love though. She'd often be lost, staring at the ashtray she often quoted to be a place where all her sadness piled up.
She loved rains. She'd hold out her palms, the rain dripping from her old balcony above us, where an old couple had once lived and died. The old man had overdosed on sleeping pills. She wrote of those evenings in her diary. She never let me read it.
I sat in silent corners, turning a blind eye to her transitory pleasures. I was grumpy. I drank too much. Erotica and body horror kept me occupied.
However, in her last days, I wouldn't have the slightest idea of, she acted strange. She wrote suicidal poetry. She hardly spoke to me. I insisted we go out for a movie. She'd refuse. It had rained that evening, when I returned from work. I thought I'd stand beside her, doing what she loved the most. She had left me a note at the doorstep, smeared, almost written in a hurry, how she was sorry about everything. I never found out where she went, I tried, half heartedly, to search for her but in vain. I often think of her on these evenings and I write. I write erotica.
Copyright © Satwik Mishra | Year Posted 2018
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