Ingrained Instinct.

It was a cold and dark night. I could see the street light trickle through my tinted window. It made funny shadows against my cupboards. I was breathing heavy and listening to the silence blanketing my room. It felt oddly sinister. The howling dogs and the easy breathing of my own. I lay still, and watched the shapes of the shadows hoping to interpret what they can mean. All I saw were the grilled bars of my protected window.

I was thinking of the man next to my room. A part of me was tugging at the life we had shared. My mind was encircling these insidious thoughts and nurturing them with the faint hint of love. The warmth of him being there was more than just comforting. It was one of those divine feelings of wholesomeness.

“So this was how it was meant to be”.

He was sleeping in the room adjacent. We were only separated by a thin wall. The papery differences we have been fighting began to attack my senses. I felt the struggle overwhelming at the base of my neck. How familiar all these feelings have become. How natural for me to fight him when he’s not even there.

I walked into his room, silently..menacingly slow. I was taking in each second that passed me by. I wanted to feel the impact of my being there. My walking over to him. My wanting to see him in the middle of the night.

I quietly slipped into his room. I watched him from the end of the bed. I slid my eyes from his feet till his face. I let them slither here and there, taking in every bit of his being. He was curled in the fetal position and seemed to intensely dream many things. That was him. He liked to do things with abundant intensity, like the passion of the sun as it shines on sunflowers.

As he was peacefully dreaming away, my mind let itself wade through all that we had shared. I let my memory take the shape of the day when I woke up and saw him first thing that morning. I remember feeling an overflowing fountain erupt somewhere deep inside me. I confused it to be so many emotions.

He was such a beautiful person. His honest ways and untainted love. I wonder why life has been cruel to him. But then. Life is generally cruel. We just like to fool ourselves into thinking it’s a wonderful event. His world was crumbling all the time. His golden dreams always stunted by selfish twists in his life, his simple needs becoming mountains of rules..everything was an abrupt change for him. I wondered why his life was never a smooth curve.

He was dreaming something happy. I could see his lips forming that half-smile. I could see that he was finally in his contented world. It’s the only place that atleast gives him a time to rejoice his life. It was the time when all he went through was redeemed. His world of dreams was where he, sometimes, felt his gratifying relief.

I shook him gently, but repeatedly, till he woke up. I told him to come to my room and give me company because I was scared. With his blurry vision and grumpy mind, he willingly followed me. I knew he was instinctually calm. I was a part of his system. Being there for me was unquestioned.

(What if I, too, was his life's cruelty? What if he, still, redeemed me?)

He sat at the edge of my bed. Rubbing his eyes, breathing heavy and then watching me. I snuggled into my quilt and watched the night softly falling on him and me. The air between us was laying the final bricks of our invisible walls. I knew the love we had was godly, it was that untouchable, divine feeling that no one else will ever share with us. But we were beginning to juxtapose each other.

This was how we were meant to be. Communicate our love in silent words. Through the cables of the night’s air. Through the quiet understanding. While looking at each other in hushed darkness. To feel it in our very souls.

We knew.