Does Melancholy Stop?

Does melancholy stop? Resting on his arms, she asked. Pitch dark, devoid of any human noise except their silence, their decapitated hearts yearning to shout to each other, but still outside. He glanced at her, trying his best to control the tears that could follow and hence destroy his strength, smiling, said, “we triumph over the darkness, eh.” Little did the signals that intermittently blinked to let the train pass by knew, that he had asked the same thing himself for quite a while now. And every time, it was just a blind thud in the dark, hurting himself even more. It was more than cold today, as if winter how much avoided, but had finally arrived bringing along nothing but a chilly desertification.

Feeling the wind, as usual, she held her hand but today it seemed different, as she was holding on to it more tightly fearing to let it go. Avoiding any major eye contact, he asked looking at her nails, “the pink one again, huh?” Before even her replying, he said- “I know, you don’t like much fashion, but try something else too”, while deep inside he had always wanted to see nothing but the pink polish he had brought for her. She replied, “I didn’t pay attention to it” though she had always looked to it that it had to be nothing but the same pink shade on her nails.

What followed was even more wasted attempts at striking a conversation when it was obvious that it had to be just another of those wasted attempts, where silence around each other was more preferred. From the platform, the stars were brooding. “Look, how brightly they shine.”, she pointed out and suddenly grew silent. All of those crazy, eccentric conversations where they had planned to settle on one of the stars as their home, came flooding down their memory lanes, wreaking havoc upon their already aching hearts. “Be good, okay?”, the words came fumbling from his mouth. In a flash, she said- “What about you, huh?”. This time he didn’t say anything, neither she waited for his reply. What succeeded was an endless stare into each other’s eyes praying that this transitory moment be etched into their hearts forever.

The deafening horn and the blinding signal followed. Finally, the train had arrived. They kept checking their dials, wondering why the train had arrived so early. For the last time, he smiled with all his sorrow inside him. She started retracing her heavy footsteps, but an even heavier heart. And one last glance so that he could fill all of him in her forever. That night, he sat there gazing at the same homeless star. Little did he know that it wasn’t one but two souls fixating themselves to the twinkle.