weightless

He gazed into the eternal abyss of her eyes, searching. The answers should be there somewhere he thought; embedded deep beneath the beauty and chaos that faced him. He could already sense them—the words threatening to spill from behind her trembling lips. He fought the urge to kiss them as she starts to lose the battle to contain the emotions in her chest accumulating like fine dust. It was only a matter of time—the kind that freezes on you when you want it to fly.

They stood opposite each other as the day melted into a dark starless night. He held the girl’s hands and tried to feel the last drops of affection that might still be circulating in her body. He wanted to shake her, rack her brain, her heart. But he knew the attempt would be futile. Nothing would come out of her but impacted sorrow for breaking a heart—his heart. He didn’t need such sympathy. Instead, his soul craved for pain in the form of the most potent lie she could muster… or just the one absolute truth; anything that could shock his core and arrest his senses. But she wouldn’t give him any.

The winds began to whisper finality to the moment. Hands grew cold and pulses raced in the anticipation of the inevitable. But he was in love and in pain and everything that filled both extremes. Sadly, for the young man, irrational hope springs with love. Once it plants itself on someone, nothing else matters. Even reality plays in a blur and in a twisted series of captured moments in time. And he was in it, taking it all in heaving deep breaths.

The film finally started to roll again and time woke up from what seemed like a deep slumber. Tears cascaded from the girl’s eyes, hands clenched tightly on his. The young man couldn’t wait for the answers any longer. Hope-driven, he drew the girl closer and leaned slowly forward. He took a last glimpse of her glassy brown eyes before closing his and planting a gentle kiss on those lips he loved so much. A flickering sense of bliss engulfed him—a window in time that remained open for only a flutter of a hummingbird’s wings.

Tears escaped his eyes the moment he felt the girl’s unresponsive lips. On his tongue stuck an indelible taste of loss, bitter and paralyzing. Warmth vanished from his grasp as the girl’s hands slackened and finally left his. He was collapsing on himself. He felt weightless. He wanted to fall and crash on the ground. But he wouldn’t. The girl gave him one last look before she turned her back on him. And then she slowly walked away, mouth brimming with the only words that could’ve set him free from the weight of the love that had become his gravity.