There is a moment each evening when the world feels gentler. The noise drops. The light softens. The sky drapes itself in red, gold, and soft violet. It is a little interlude prior to the night. It is as though the universe were whispering. “Look up. Breathe”. And when there is no noise, I always wish to turn to you and say, The sunset is beautiful, isn’t it.
By that I mean something much more serious. I mean, I am in love with you, and I wish I didn’t have to let go.
The heavens are my interpreter. It is what I could never express in simple terms.
I thought you were a different person. I was saying to myself that you would remain the only one. You had a spark, which was hard to come by, or at least I had persuaded myself that it was hard to come by.
You exuded in your eyes a warmth that made me forget old losses. You felt like a possibility. As of a door I always hoped I should open. As a peaceful beach, the storms all over. I believed that I found someone who would not have second thoughts about picking me.
But hearts have odd habits. They draw illusions when they are alone at night. They draw whole futures with small details. I confused short delicateness with the promise. I ran in the empty spaces with my stories that were soothing. I engraved our fate much earlier than you engraved yours. And somewhere by the way, my tale became heavier than the fact.
Your eyes, which were a source of hopeeturned in my mind into shadows. I replayed every glance. I sought a meaning that was not there. It was like ploughing through the sand and searching for gold. Each memory cut deeper. I made ordinary things out to be great images. When I became smaller than you, I had made you bigger than life.
I myself can now see how this was my doing. Not your fault. Not mine either. Merely a weary heart that tries to think so special.
At some point, the truth ceases to whisper, but it knocks. And when the truth at last came, it did not soothe me. It stung. It took away the tales that I had narrated to myself. It made me realise that what I had referred to as fate was nothing but a longing in a brilliant costume. We were not a couple of stars going towards each other. We were two people who had brushed past each other and then gone. The effect was actual, and the permanence was never intended.
I want to say this out loud. I still love you. Fully. Quietly. Without demand. But underneath that love is wearying. I am sick of giving my heart to something that does not move. It is as though it were putting a hole in the bottom of the cup. The water continues to disappear. I continue to accuse myself of emptiness.
I at times imagine that I am a little planet around your sun. I keep spinning. You keep shining. However, the distance does not decrease. Your light will warm me and never get down deep. I like you and lose myself little by little. But still I remain, and I hope for a miracle. No wonder I feel drained.
Each of the people whom I loved taught me something. Some lessons were accompanied by laughter. Some came with silence. And some came in with heartbreak as an unwanted consequence. My fate has always been to first arrive. The one who tries. The sender of messages in the emptiness. The person who clings to shreds of fabric because letting go is tantamount to failure.
Even life is perhaps making me re-evaluate directions. Perhaps, this time, it is not the courageous thing to do. Maybe stepping back is. Perhaps, it is not hope, but fear that I am always trying to move you, the fear of losing the story I made about you.
Death is like giving up. And yielding up is like dying. But there is a weird tranquillity that lurks in dying. I feel it, slightly, still I can feel it.
And I still find myself asking myself whether you dream about me. Or have I already smoked away out of you? Do you wonder whether I think of you when you go past a place we have been talking about? Or if you simply keep walking. These ideas occurred to me in a random manner, most of the time when I am half asleep. They give me an empty pang that lasts till daybreak.
We have moved in tiny steps. Inches forward. Miles backwards. Every time I could believe we had gained on her, it was getting further. My efforts stretched thin. Your silence grew louder. And gradually, unutterably,y we both gave up.
It was useless to begin with, wasn’t it? Not dramatic. Not tragic. Just a quiet mismatch. A gradual disintegration of something that could never have a base to erect itself.
And the next time I have to stand under the red sky at night, I shall whisper, The sunset is beautiful, isn’t it. It will be my farewell to say goodbye without dismembering myself in the process.
The truth is simple. You will move on. I will heal. There will be a burning sky tomorrow as well. It will not miss me. It will not hold my sorrow. But I will see it and be a little lighter every time.
Since endings are not failures. They are gentle shifts.
And in that changing light, I will say to myself, the sunset is beautiful, isn’t it, not because I am attempting to get to you, but because I am getting to know how to make contact with myself once again.
Yes, it is beautiful. Painfully so.
And in its glow, I finally understand why I must let you go.
I whisper it one last time, to you and to myself: the sunset is beautiful, isn’t it?