While He Smoked, She Wrote

Throwing the duvets out of their beds, they both could feel succumbing every inch of their defunct bodies to such a pain that couldn't be put into words. They could feel that sharp pang of ache spreading to every bit of their souls right from the very core of their existence. Bringing their palms to the bloodshot eyes of theirs, they shielded them from those blaring rays of the early sun that seemed to rejoice while they kept writhing away with such a pain that could never be explained but only felt.

They weren't together, rather they were miles away from one another; Perhaps oceans away from each other or who knew maybe they were worlds apart from each other yet they both borne the same inexplicable pain almost simultaneously right at the middle of their fragmented hearts, and they knew it were the hands of the destiny that kept twisting the dagger, that kept stabbing them steadily until they felt nothing but anguish swallowing them in the entirety. The only patent difference, that laid between them was their ways to escape that very pain that kept rending them into nothing but remnants of the selves they both once used to be.

His body trembled, while he clutched his chest as the pain of undeniable separation kept gnawing at his insides. He kept stumbling back and forth, while his mouth became too parched to even call her name out at the top of his lungs. He kept looking around, in a salient attempt to find his escape from the pain that kept raging across his body. His eyes kept searching fervently to find his sole and ultimate escape from this pain of being ripped apart from the only girl whom he once loved with his everything.

Whereas, in another corner of this vast universe, she kept curling her fist around her aching mouth, in an attempt to shackle the incoherent wails and whines that threatened to break violently out of her. She kept wobbling hither and thither, suppressing that irrevocable urge to scream out his name as she remained on the verge of exploding from the pain of not having the love of her life beside her anymore. She kept glancing, her eyes jumping searchingly all over the place to find the only escape that she ever had to get away from the storming ache that kept tugging at the jagged cracks of her broken heart.

Slamming the window of his room open, he exhaled a long held up sigh before looking down at his hands where his escape waited for him, silently mumbling to him to come and embrace it wholeheartedly. He kept fumbling with the packet, his once callous and long fingers now shivered and trembled as the pain of being torn away from his beloved became more ferocious and intolerable with every passing second. His lips kept quivering as he held that one roll of cut tobacco enclosed in a paper between them, while lighting the end of it with that favorite lighter of his, and finally letting his escape to devour him, to pull him away from the cold reality and from that piercing pain - into a world of derealization and delusions as he took his first and foremost long drag of the cigarette.

While in another world, she stood still, with her fist that kept clenching and unclenching as she tried to recall where she had last kept them. And there they were - her escape, staring at her longingly and inviting her to rush towards them and lose every ounce of her being to them, away from that harsh pain that kept eating her with every passing moment. She enclasped the fingers around them, grasping her escape from the bedside table, and slouching down onto the cold marbled floor as her hands burned to immerse into those blank pages of her notebook. She curled her shaking fingers around that favorite pen of hers, before letting the lucid blue ink to take reign of her hollow soul, as she finally let her escape to submerge her wholly and away from the sombre reality - into the world of words that awaited her heartily.

And there, he leaned against the window sill, with his eyes closed as he let out a puff of bliss that seemed to sooth the indescribable pain away bit by bit, even though he had known it was just going away momentarily. Taking a last puff before discarding the smoked cigarette, he paused for a spilt second before seizing another one from the packet, but then her face flashed behind the closed lids of him, and he felt those suffocating claws of reality choking him, causing him to let another stick to devour him utterly without even halting or faltering for another second, away from the demons that kept inflicting pain at his insides and away from that perpetual cracking of the heart that laid within his chest - too debilitated to beat without her name engraved in every chamber of it.

On the other hand, numbness kept soaking her insides up as she kept inscribing words after words on those countless white pages that reminded her of the life that laid ahead of her, all barren and empty. Her arms hurt, her fingers became stiff with every stroke of the ink across the pages as she kept devoting herself entirely to the escape that kept her going, that kept the pain at a bay even though temporarily. She kept filling every page with everything that she had ever felt for that boy with whom she was supposed to entwine this fate of hers. She kept writing even though her soul begged her to pause for a while, even though her mind ached from replaying every snippet of those happy and blissful memories that she had created with his love. She wrote and wrote, wrecking every nerve of her, and rending every wound open only to evade the pain that she needed to face one fateful day.

Meanwhile, the sun had sunk far behind those greenish meadows that he could see from the window. His eyes stung from the nasty smoke that was now entrenched in every nook of his room, as if clouding his mind from reliving every minute that he had once spent with her. He kept gazing the sky, not once marveling at the way it kept changing its hues from the past hours - at times blue to orange, and sometimes orange to purple. Rather, he could hear the sky mocking the state that he had been rendered for loving someone with his all. Rather, he could see them snickering viciously and spitting malice at him for loving her so deeply that he could no longer find the person he was before committing the desirous blunder of falling in love with such a girl that was never meant to be in his destiny. He could feel the universe laughing at him upon seeing him paying the price of loving someone that was never supposed to be his in the first place.

He smoked, smoked, and smoked while his lungs kept burning, while his lips lost its beautiful shade of pink, while his existence kept withering away with every puff of tobacco that he kept dragging before letting the smoke out with severe fits of coughs rumbling out of him. He kept smoking, until he felt his own soul being set ablaze in the flames that could never be doused till he kept loving her and only her.

And there, she allowed her swirling head to lean against the wall while holding onto the pens and notebooks resting on her lap. Closing her eyes, she saw the forbidden depths of her mind unraveling, and enlivening the secluded corner that held nothing but the shattered dreams and crumbled fantasies that she had once woven with him being the steadfast part of her life. Her throat burned and constricted, as her breaths stayed hitched in the midway while the numerous scars of heartache that she had kept repressed started to resurface once again, causing her to get numb as the clock continued to tick by somewhere in the background. She kept rocking herself back and forth, trying her best to not let that barely mended soul to fragment all over again as the alleys of the once beautiful past that she had shared with him resurrected behind her closed lids.

And there, she couldn't restrain herself anymore and commenced to pour her cracked heart out in the form of those words on the pages, filling those blank canvas completely in an attempt to fill the empty chapters of her life vicariously that were marked by the constant absence of the one she had loved selflessly. There, she started ripping her limbs apart as she wrote and wrote until her fingers went perfectly stoic; until she couldn't feel any fiber of her body, until she could no longer feel her shattered heart still longing to thump for him, and only him.

Soon in his world, the moonlight of the darkling night fell on the side of his face, as he remained crouched down beside the window. He knew not to lift his gaze up and look at that beautiful yet scarred moon only to be reminded of those times when he felt aspired to lay the foundation of a world that only revolved around her. It was his thirtieth cigarette that he held patiently between his cold fingers, yet he could feel that pain looking at him, sneering at him and waiting to pierce through his insides the instant he would let go of his escape. And right then and there, he chose to live in that world that his escape had given to him, and there he chose to stay oblivious to the truth of him and her, away from the world where it was becoming unendurable to continue to live with her not being at his side. And there, he chose his ultimate escape over everything and unceasingly smoking - until his eyes shut themselves out of perennial exhaustion, and with slumber lulling him into its lanes filled with fragments of the past; until his body remained unredeemable beside the window sill with the ashtray retaining the ashes of the several cigarettes that he smothered himself with - only in a futile effort to forget the pain that was now forever embedded in his very existence.

Whereas in her world, she remained wordless, staring at the moon that dazzled and gleamed far away behind the closed window of her room. She remained static, as her mind finally stopped reiterating and reliving every bit of the past for the zillionth time. She stayed still, numbed and cold as she felt the pain of the harsh reality to hide somewhere away from her only to reappear during the early streaks of the dawn. She persisted to sit on the floor, holding her pen between her stiff fingers, while placing her notebooks close to her heart, trying to forever escape the pain of not being able to be with the one she once loved with her all; only in the discreet attempt to shroud herself from the inundating ache that kept taking over her since the day she parted her ways with him, compelled to the hands of the merciless thing called fate. She stayed motionless, though breathing and absolutely alive but with the hollowness and a ceaseless agony that now was imperishably written boldly across the very center of her being.

Letting out a heavy and rueful sigh, while the faces of one another kept flashing across the minds of both of them, they succumbed to their own escapes, to the darkness and away from the aching stabbing of their fates that now remained defeated in some corner only to vanquish the two of them yet again the moment their eyes would open to those first rays of the sun; indicating a new day given to both of them only to perish in the flames of the ache of their hearts that still couldn't overcome the grief of being separated for the rest of their lives.

And the only patent difference that laid amid the two of them, was that one chose to smoke away the pain of his broken heart and unrealized dreams and hopes, while the other chose ink as the sole medium to burn away the incessant anguish of separation that destiny had brutally preordained in the lives of them till they breathed their last.