Evenings

Are you afraid of the evenings? Once I used to love them, would wait for the scorching heat to die and the breeze rush in, ‘work’ time had ended, all smiles and laughs, as warriors returned home. My darling night just around the corner. Evening was my happy spot.

I was fond of the ambiguity of the sky. Reddish orange, and all the colours it had to boast. I was fond of the endless rustling of the trembling leaves. I waited for my poems to come and sleep on the pages. Neat and tucked in, cozy and cherishing the warmth of memories attached.

Staring at the bright screen, I went on and about you. I seemed ready to plunge in the madness. Euphoria of living, alacrity of emotions, tingling in the mind, tantalising spurts of happiness. I called you all of that. Keep on talking, I’ll keep on listening, you keep on smiling, I’ll keep on falling.

Evenings were you. Such simple equations I’d made, so easy to get hooked. You were my reddish skies, you were the conversations over piping hot tea, you were my musings, you were my clouds, I’d hide behind. Metaphors never seemed a hyperbole, poems never seemed fictitious, evenings never seemed lonely.

A wet duster on the blackboard, a drop of water on dust, a blow on the dandelion, an eraser on your story, and yet another evening on a day apart, was enough to wipe everything away. Distances creeped in between, pulling me apart.

Now evening seemed scary. Incomplete, missing, broken, lost, just like the mornings. Evenings were now vulnerable, a pinch where it hurt the most, a dark and blacked out room, an unanswered call yet ringing somewhere far.

And I move about, petrified, wondering, are you afraid of the evenings?