To feel their presence more in their absence…
People leave. They leave us in places they created for them and we, people leave us in homes. Homes that once represented love and comfort and now that their creators are gone, smell of memories and pain. People leave us with questions unanswered, the answers to which are not untraceable but will not have the desired meaning as the people who gave those questions have left. People leave; leave us with their energy, their thoughts, and their love. Love that once seemed everything that I possessed seems unattainable now because the one that made me feel that love is no longer with me. People leave, leave us with the umpteen uncompleted dreams we created with them, dreams that defined our existence and struggle, dreams that celebrated togetherness and serenity. Those dreams stand to shatter today in the heart as I say, ‘The dreamer in me was taken away by the one who told me that dreams come true one day.’
What to make of these shattered dreams in a shattered heart? How to create a world without them being a part? How do I start afresh when the void in my heart is still at unrest? Where to start from for this longing and pain is unendurable to process?
They come, talk to us in a thousand silences, making us incapable to converse in words as they leave. They take us with them to many undiscovered worlds painted with love and imagination and leave us alone there as they vanish to begin a new conquest. What did they mean when they said, ‘We are meant to stay?’ How to live in this ‘We’ without them being a part of it? Or did that ‘We’ meant me and their memories?
There are moments when so many things are left unsaid, unheard of. If expression is lost, is love too? What if our hearts could speak? Would we have many more stories to tell? Would then a love not expressed well be validated? Would then so many love stories not be called ‘unrequited?’
For love not only exists in moments. For some, it exists in memory. Memory of someone who had once felt like ‘home.’ But what happens when you lose that home? Is the love lost too? Can that home of love be found again? And even if it could be, would you feel the same emotions this time as well?
People come to become a part of our stories. Stories that shall continue to live when they are gone. They exist in a past that dwells in the present. How is it possible to take out the songs that they sang to the hearts? How to leave people from whom time drifted us apart, people who stay in our very hearts.
People just don’t leave us but take away something from our world too. In return, they give us a ‘void’ in the heart that stores them, and the ‘home’ they built in our hearts. This void is not a dark space rather it is enchanting for its a way for light to enter the shattered walls of my heart and breathe it with hope. This void is a golden realm for only when you are broken, a way is paved for you to discover yourself in the chaos that surrounds you. People come and paint their colours on our lives and then they leave…
Leave us to dream, hope, and create our colours in the world of void.
Isha Sharma
Kamala Nehru College, Delhi University
Isha Sharma is a third-year student pursuing Majors in English from Delhi University. She is passionate about the process of translating emotions into verses. She has completed an internship with The Indian Express. Her works, including articles and poems, have been published in The Indian Periodical, The Indian Express, The Feminist Times, Indus Women Writing Newsletter, and The Tribune (Student Edition). Besides writing, she loves to read, dance, and spend time with her family.
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