Dark Night

It is a dark night, the sky void of stars, the clouds lending a shade of grey to the black of the sky; much like the sky, that waits patiently for the moon, even as the clouds huddle together; do you remember the pictures where all the tall folks stood in front of us, the short ones, such that we were there and also not there, our memories lost in the pictures from long ago? The moon still shines and some of the clouds turn white, but there is a certain amount of tiredness, which only they can decipher, those who have been through the darkness and been able to shine despite the clouds in their mind; for the mind is often clouded with thoughts of the night, thoughts that come to us when there is only silence around us. For there is a rhythm to this silence, it ebbs and flows with our breaths, in and out, in and out, and the breaths transform into thoughts, into dreams of times when we had similar moments of silence in the past. And so it is, that in the dark of the night, we feel comfortable as our eyes adjust to the faint moonlight streaming in through our windows; a sense of familiarity, the smell of the flowers of the tree, slowly seeping in, substituting the overpowering smells of the people we know, and of the memories we wove.

I think of you, a shadow from the past, and you conjure up in front of me, a wisp of the wind, a familiar sound ringing in my ears, though all I hear is silence; silence, and a slight melody of the pitter-patter of the rain on the roof, it hums for a while, and I can hear it on the roof, as well as in the leaves that sway in the breeze; I listen intently as the drizzle turns into a pour, and turns back into a drizzle, as the breeze turns into a gale and back into a breeze; time flows, like a river, towards a certain sea, meandering along so many cities, and each city has a story; do you remember all the cities we visited together? And all the cities that were yet to be explored? I wonder if you’ve visited some of those places since then, if you went back and had coffee at the same café where we did; if you sat at the same bench where we spent our evening, looking at the sun as it set beyond the horizon, the sky turning from a blue to a red, then to a purple. Do you remember that night when it felt that it would not turn black at all? An infinite night, with infinite possibilities, so many paths that we could have chosen, do you also wonder if we chose the right path?

As much as I want to stay awake and think of all the things we might have been doing tonight if we were together, wakefulness now betrays me, as I slowly feel my eyes closing; betrayal is something of our nature, wouldn’t you say? We betrayed those around us and fled to the moon and beyond, imagining a life full of stars and solitude, dreaming of people who live far away and yet have the same dreams as us; it is a dark night still, and I see no escape from being consumed by it; the very nature of darkness forcing us to embrace our loneliness, ourselves, filling the void with its black of the night. But behold, stars appear now, I hear the creaking of wood floors below me, and although I know it is no one, it feels better to imagine someone walking up the stairs. Maybe it is just me, or maybe everyone craves some air to fill in this void? Do you also feel suffocated, even as you breathe the freshness of the morning breeze around you, the morning dew settling on your feet as you walk through the soft grass? Or do the fields feel thornier, full of hardships that you did not imagine to be tackling alone? These thoughts keep me awake tonight, a mind full of questions that no one has answers to; and I imagine if everyone thinks of these questions, but do not bring them up to each other, for fear of being laughed at, look he’s lost his mind they’d say, but silently acknowledge that we all are the same, battling the same battles, worrying the same worries, living the same lives?