Remember that day? It seems so far away now. I can trace down the finest details of that day. Twenty-eighth. I could describe to you how hot the weather was, how humid exactly. I can tell you how the earth was aching to be blessed with rain on it's parched dry fragments. I can even tell you how long it took for the rain to grace and meet it's waiting partner.
Remember how you kept me waiting at the station? Remember how I was hungry but you took me to a coffee shop instead? I still know the digits to the auto we rode together. I know the shirt you wore, it was black. I remember the colours I was wrapped in - pink and white. I'd just slipped into whatever I found the fastest, for the desire to meet you beat all others.
You'd shocked me that day. With your eyes, your arms and your ring. You promised me a forever. You made my fairytale come alive. And as I picked up that rose, I remember you asked me, "Why do you need to keep this rose? You have a ring to remember this by, every day of your life."
*
I'm sitting on the beach. I don't know how I got here. Lately I reach places, without any memory of having made any effort to get there whatsoever. My feet guide me perhaps. They take me where my roots ache to be. I don't know what they're guiding me to.. My fate ? Or are they just taking me away, far away from this life you'd built for me?
I sit by the waves for I'm tired. I hunt my bag for a pack of cigarettes. Yes, I smoke now. I guess you made me see shades of me I thought incapable of existing. The breeze however is too strong, and I can't light my cigarette. I shuffle around to find some distraction from these people surrounding me. I stumble upon my favourite book and wrench it open with a rage so misplaced, I scare the kids around. Yes, I scare everyone away these days.
This book wasn't supposed to be here. As I flip it open, gentler this time, I find the dried remains of the rose I'd kept in memory of our date. In memory of twenty-eighth. It comes rushing back and I know not how long it has been. Years, or months, or just days. Wasn't it just yesterday that we promised each other an always? The flashbacks hurt. I see couples on the beach, walking hand in hand and I see the faint outlines of us in them. But we'll never walk by this beach again.
I find myself fidgeting with the ring that still hangs around my neck, for I took it off my finger when we ended. As I take small but steady steps, towards the ocean, the shadows of these strangers haunts me. The warmth of teardrops on my skin, is no surprise for giving up any part of you was never easy. I slowly tug at the thread around my neck, and it breaks. We break, for the final time.
As I walk away from the sea, I carry with me still that dried rose. It's my memory of us. But your most precious gift to me, the ring, floats in the sea now, taking it's last breaths, for it's end is near. It needs to drown. And once it has sunk to the bottom of this sea, and dissolved altogether - when nothing remains of it but sand - I promise to find someone else, to give me another ring, another memory, another date.
Till then, my brain and heart resonate just one: twenty eighth.
