Broken

Broken

They sat quietly, at the edge of their beds, in their separate homes.

Once blooming, the flowers had now withered. The green and the blue and the red and the pink had turned not black or white, but a pale shade of grey. Where a beautiful building once stood at the corner, was now a cracked abode of the homeless. The chirping of the birds had given way to a cacophony of wild traffic.

So much had changed, he thought, for the better. “Why did it change?”, she asked.

The first date, the first cup of coffee, the first kiss goodnight and the first touch were all a jumbled memory now. There was no whiff of the first candlelight dinner in the air. There was no nudging while watching the wedding video together an umpteenth time now.

Both sat thinking, whose house would Meera go to after school tomorrow? Will she be the same bubbly self tomorrow onward? Will she tell about her day before inquiring about the other parent?

Life had truly U-turned for now both were strangers again. Strangers to each others’ pain and agony.

For a moment, there was a longing for each other. For a moment, there was an epiphany. And, then there was an echo of constant bantering, of the slaps across the face, of the uninhibited whining to strangers. Love was lost right there and then.

Meera waited anxiously the next day after school, all set to narrate her day. She saw two individuals approaching her, from opposite directions. And she stood there, “broken”!