dark days

the sky loomed over my head like a huge, blue blanket with a lot of tears. sitting on the terrace of my apartments, winds started billowing my loose t-shirt, so much so that my thin frame looked like that of an overly obese man. the sound of the howling wind filled my ears and my mind so much so that anything I didn't focus on was lost into the trenches of my mind.

   somewhere far away, i heard someone call my name. a woman. someone i knew. someone i knew very well. I turned around, almost by instinct, but as soon as I did, I realized the futility of what i did. " She's dead. SHE'S DEAD.. she is GONE. no need to turn around anymore" I said out loud, almost screaming. the last sentence brought the memory forth, again. again and again, i visited that memory, that 3 second scene which replayed in my mind like a broken cassette. her screaming, my wailing and the sound of the car's hood scraping on the road. the memory revisited brought great unhappiness and a tinge of guilt every time. every single time. but now, i had had enough.

 ' people die everyday. even if we don't want it to happen, it does. there's no life on earth that isn't marred by sorrow or tragedy. why should mine be any different?' i keep saying to myself, as soon as the guilt resurfaces. " it wasn't my fault. IT WASN'T MY FAULT" i shouted into the vast expanse of sky, irrationally hoping it would comfort me. it didn't. 

 this thought pattern broke when the rain started. at first, it fell on me, silently. soon, the sound of the falling raindrops and the howling winds reached a crescendo. nothing remained in my head except for the sound of wind gushing through the seams of my loose shirt and the sound of raindrops over my head. my heart pounded like a race horse, but I didn't notice it. my hand was gripping an old photograph so hard that it was on the verge of crumpling to dust, to become nothing but a memory, but i didn't notice that either. the only thing i noticed was the shape of a dark cloud in the sky. it lay in front of me, and above me. just enough high that i could see it and not too high that i had to strain my neck. a blackish, blue cloud. in itself, it wasn't a very peculiar one, but what i saw in it, no one else could have. i saw her face. i saw, with excruciating detail, the shape of her honey brown eyes, her soft lips, her thin, sharp nose and most of all, i saw her smiling at me. i wept silently, unknowingly. the rain beat down hard upon me as i stared at the cloud, hoping it would last forever. it didn't. but, as the cloud got swept away from the sky, so did part of my guilt and sorrow.

  sure, the memory remains, but now, the picture isn't tainted by the black ink of sorrow which, for weeks, had clouded it. sure, the is some sadness that remains too. but one thing I've learnt is that I shouldn't let sadness eclipse the memory of the woman I loved. the woman who loved me. the woman who died.