“Has it always been so hard?”, he asked.
“Well, it hasn’t been this hard. No.” said she.
“Then why now, of late?”
“Well maybe I was too happy… I had more friends than foes.” Laughed she.
“That isn’t so bad”
“Oh it is, doesn’t allow you think, doesn’t allow you sit.
Happiness tires you.
Happiness frustrates you.
You sit with a pen and paper out of habit and you end up leaving it blank.” Said she
“Have I hurt you today?”
“I do not know.I am not sure.But you’ve let me speak today“, smiled she.
She rose from the chair, twirled on her toes,
Fixed her eyes on him and bent close.
“Have you ever laughed in the middle of a song?Or sneezed in the middle of a speech?”
“Not that I can remember of?”
“Shhhh… Tonight you let me speak.
Have you been interrupted in the middle of a final act,
An act you have been imagining to deliver without a flaw?
Or tried painting with a bruised thumb?
Or left a painting incomplete?
Tore off a sheet with a verse,
Just because you didn’t like the nuisance you poured on it?
Have you tumbled into a pool?
Got up,
And have you wanted to tumble into it again?
I have dreamt wildly colorful dreams,
I knew not where the colors came from.
A nameless rainbow after the storms brought to me a nameless cloud.
The cloud ran dry with all the running around,
The bottles lay empty now.
The colors that lit up new dreams for me,
Lay dried in the bottles.
The canvas with an unfinished figure made.
I had the brush and the canvas and the bottles in front.
But the colors didn’t rise in my brush now.
The moisture in them lost.
And then one day, that storm came again,
Drenched me and my bottles of hues.
The rainbow was not the same one.It had different shades of orange and blues.
The figure on the canvas grew a new wing.
The figure on the canvas could now sing.
The dreams I dreamt never came back.
The storm brought to me a new cloud.
This one doesn’t shed often,
But when it does ,I see my dreams peeking
And I hear my dreams shrieking
From a distant nameless cloud.
A cloud that had once come to me,
Lost its name and never came back.
Here you sit, listening to me,
Like a dumb puppet you stare.
I have always been this lunatic, I have always had imaginations,
Your distant love made me numb.
I had words that boiled inside
Only to get frozen on my lips,
The foolish pleasures numbed my fingers and my pen’s nibs.
Here you sit, staring as if you never knew the real me..
Maybe you did,
Maybe it was this insanity you fell for
And then you lost me like that nameless cloud I lost”
“Have I hurt you terribly today?”, after a long pause he asked.
She sighed gently, sat down, looked at him and said,
“Thank you for unveiling a masked.”
