The beds

They dragged the beds apart. It felt like I was in a courtroom watching a newly divorced couple bid goodbye. Only, these were beds and not couples. For years these two beds were placed just beside our window. The left one was mine and the one to the right was his. Our togetherness had glued them jointly. As one they had stood, till now.

I don't know if beds spoke to each other. If they did, what could they possibly say at the moment? 

 Caught in this childish thought I entangled myself in my memories. 

 I remembered drawing a thick line on an interleaved copy with a blunt Camel pencil, dividing the ruled page into two halves. The two columns were then tagged as "Characteristics of living things" and "Characteristics of non-living things" respectively. I had pressed my pencil below the heading hard to draw a fat "sleeping line", in order to underline the headings. I can well recall the points which were listed below the headings, "Non-living things don't speak". Yes, and neither did they feel, eat or think. Yet, today, while watching our beds being pulled away from one another, it felt as if someone was obliterating that bold grey pencil line drawn ages ago with a non-dust eraser.

 I didn't realize if it were the beds that were grieving their separation or was it me. 

Standing on the other side of the room was the other occupant of the once joined beds. The look in his eyes was hard to decipher or maybe it seemed harder owing to our distance.

The newly exposed space between the beds seemed like a metaphor for space. The space between us or should I say him and me? 

I went and sat on his bed. 

We used to spend moments before sleep in here, deciding our respective sides of the bed. Blissful were those nights when tired after those fights we both ended up sleeping on the same side.

 Running my hands over the creases of the bedsheet I was groping for our imprints in his bed. Some tired breaths, some sound sleeps, some tranquil smiles. Resting my face on his pillow I tried to inhale his scent. 

At the other end of our room, he plopped himself on my bed, unlike me, he wasn't engrossed in search of my traces. Why wasn't he?

The question played in the threshold of my lips but didn't walk it's way to him. Not that he could answer it either. 

After a while, he stood up ... 

Cradling my framed photograph in his arms he stared at my face. A small teardrop oozed out of his eyes and rested on the glass with my face resting beneath it. 

Still sitting on his bed, I was scanning him with a pair of round vigilant eyes.

The sun had cast its golden rays gently, on the void which toddled in our room. He came and stood on the newly created vacant space on the floor and uttered, " My dear here is where we stand."

I walked to stand in front of him.

 I placed my hands on his. 

He smiled. 

Basking in the afternoon sun, there we stood, hand in hand.

Death might have wiped my breath but never can it wipe my touch