AU REVOIR

Dear Tiana,

I'm leaving you.

At this moment, it feels like I'm watching you from afar. Like through a hollow, dim tunnel that only sheds light over every detail of you. You lay on a paper like cloth with the edges crinkled. Those beautiful dark eyes of yours that were like flames of driftwood fire, are closed; the eyelids a fading canvass of a rosy pink. It's funny how your mascara is intact; the gothic brown lipstick hasn't smudged yet while every other part of you is ruined.

Rivulets of blood run down your face, gashes are still opening up even as the doctors work on you. Your favourite lilac shirt that you had ironed with utmost care before wearing it, has now turned into a ghastly shade of brown as if mud had splattered the smooth fabric. Only it didn't. The debris of the car that had hit you sparkles in your soft mass of raven hair like the nebulous stars in the night sky.

No, I don't want to look at this version of you: broken and bleeding; your head grotesquely resting over a pool of crimson that seeps on and on into the material of the hospital bed. It is as if you are poised to wake up but you never will.

But the doctors declared that you would survive this. I happen to know that when you do wake up, you will hate the sterile smell of this hospital. Confusion will engulf you as you slowly realise I've left you, that I'm no longer by your side. You will madly search me, in every possible way. But I will remain a mystery to you; an empty crevice within a deep, blurry vacancy. The loneliness will creep up your skin, ravishing your senses to only focus on the loss of me. The pain of losing me will be more than the pain of the wounds and the scars that are inflicted by this inhumane accident.

But wounds heal, scars fade and people live.

And so I must leave. For I believe that in the absence of me, there will be people to help you, guide you through the dismal abyss in which I'm abandoning you. Better days will await you, even when you look for me and tears tarnish your face. Even when you feel like we are isolated from each other forever.

And some day, we will meet, or so I hope. Someday time will stitch us back together.Me leaving you would be an obsolescent process, but you stumbling upon me will be an enlightening one.

Au Revoir, Tiana. We'll meet again.

– Your memory.

Maisha Nazifa Kamal is on a mission to defeat all Muggles in procrastination. Join forces with her at 01shreshtha7@gmail.com