𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐀𝐧𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲

Need You To Talk To Me - New adult

[Adi]
"The darkness of nightmarish sleep fades as my consciousness comes to the surface. I stir, hearing the morning song of the koel bird that visits daily to drink water off the balcony. My vision clears with every subsequent blink, and I stretch, kicking away the light cotton sheet before turning off the AC unit and opening the window. With a deep inhale, I take in the earthy scent of fresh rain wafting from the soil of my motherland.

It almost makes me forget.

"Adi!" my grandmother calls. "Arrey baba, are you awake yet?" The harsh tone of Marathi amplifies the annoyance in her voice.

"Coming, Aji!" I rush out of the room with my flip-flops half-on, almost knocking the steel pooja thali out of her hands when I run into her in the hallway. I bow down to pay my respects, touching her feet with my hands.

"Live long," she blesses me. "Can you go get flowers for my morning pooja?"

I nod and climb up the wooden steps, crawling up in childish glee.

I don't know why everyone wears these slippers indoors. They don't keep me from sliding around.

By the time I reach the terrace door, dust covers my feet, adhering to my skin with sweat.

Oh, right. That's why.

I raise a hand to greet the gardener trimming and picking flowers off of the large hibiscus plants that line the perimeter of the flat rooftop surface. He drops a few into the small copper bowl Aji had shoved into my little hands.

Kids chattering in the building across the lane catch my attention, and I cross the terrace, avoiding the puddles pooling across the wet cement, drying unevenly in the humid Mumbai monsoon.

My arm brushes against a jasmine plant, releasing a gust of the sweet fragrance as I watch the neighbor kids. They put together some sort of seesaw by rolling a tin barrel underneath a wide panel of wood.

The crashing of the escaped container sends me back to that day last year, the sound of splintering wood splitting my eardrums. I clench my eyes shut in an attempt to block the memory out, without success. My fingers grip around the copper lip of the vessel as I tumble a few steps back, the skin of my arm once again contacting the white blooms.

Time freezes then skips forward twenty years like a VHS tape whining ahead to get to the good part. I stand on a curb outside a club, lip-locked with a woman I don't know but has somehow wrapped herself around my brain like ivy on an otherwise dead edifice.

The smell of jasmine threads together the two memories. The visage of my dream shatters when I wake with a gasp. My chest heaves, sucking in shallow gulps of air.

Still foggy from shadowy subconsciousness, my mind swims with the echoes of that summer, and what led to it."

Read the rest of the chapters the rubyranawrites published on her page. Make sure to leave her some love and add this book to your library!