A Romantic Vision

Blue Mailbox

I wept with the letter and then I called her from Timur's phone, she cried on the line instantly.

"you should come to see me mother, you and father" I spoke trying hard to sound stable.

She agreed but also lamented how my father could not take the way, he has deteriorated in health.

"Why don't you come for a week or so?" she proposes... I know Awan wants this, that is how he has planned this, I refuse.

Days passed, another letter came by, this time, it was fathers initial inscribed on the yellow paper. I burned it to flames.

Don't weaken me, he cannot lead me to betray the man I married but I won't lie, I hate to be married now even more than before.

Some days passed and I reduced in size,
I watched my neighbour had a newborn, I looked at my shrunken belly but did not cry.

"I want a child Timur" I spoke to him at dinner, he silently moved his head away from him.

"you don't have to touch me, we can have In Vitro fertilization," I said as he placed the fork on the table and that made a loud sound.

"Timur please...this life is awful and cannot live like this" I cried, shit...I broke the promise or not because I cry not for him but a child.

he shakes his head, his visage in shock and his lips have gone pale.

"please" I plead to catch his face in my arms.
He takes me into his arms gently, he does this a lot when we fight, it makes me hate him a little less." please" I keep crying, somewhere there must be a soft spot.

Then he releases me to the air like a denial, he does not raise his eyes " I am sorry Raib, I cannot do this"

I grow disgruntled and push him to the wall, I cry and scream, he might be back...
But I do not quite know why we keep on fighting for the same things.
I tell him, he has to stop being this way and understand me, he seldom returns the same tone but when he does I know he hates me as much as I do,
Then we both cry in a different room and then resolve the next day without a word.

Aren't most marriages like that?

This night when I was in my room, I did a grave mistake...

I chew my nails to the skin and turn into ash as Timur takes me into his arms. I look at him as if I have slaughtered his chick, his only friend.

He caresses my cheek and tells me he is sorry for speaking like severely, I say sorry too but for a different reason, I stare at the blue mailbox from the window, it hangs open and the letter in the box has been taken, taken to Awan.

To Awan,

This is a miserable life and you have made it less miserable or more I cannot tell,
Timur has definitely made it worse.

I am apologizing in advance that I am only going to talk about him, it is your wish cut open this letter to read it aloud, or have it burned to ashes, either way, I am going to speak what I have to.

These two years have been tiring, empty and barren, I feel barren so barren.
I gathered water at the lake of love and found blood in it. Timur is grotesque, he is horrid, he is only nice when he has been disappointing.
Oh, Awan! He is what I am and there would be no better way to put this.

He has turned into a mirror Awan, a woman must love no man who knows her better than herself.

He mirrors me every second; when I am calm and absolute he becomes calm and friendly, when I am nowhere near a doubt of expression he becomes so expressive, he is as I am. He loves me when he sees me not looking for love. He embraces me when I feel dry, he runs away when I covet him. He is my parallel universe, he senses my feelings before they are felt, how can he master me beyond my being?

He takes me on strides to see beauty when all beauty I sought is in him and he fights with me occasionally or shall I say I fight him because sometimes those fights are initiated by me just to fill the silence in my house.
I have become one of those women who nag, nags and does nothing better than that. Awan, he makes me loath living, he makes it unbearable.

When we fight, I see his mouth full of words, he only won't say because he is embarrassed or guilty or pity comes to him, but those words are there, his right to them is scaring me through his golden eyes, furiously they hark in symphony 'leave me then, free me of you, divorce me'

He never said that but he wants to say it so badly, it drips from his mouth like drool.

We have started to say hurtful things to each other, a lot of times we cross our lines, I tell him he isn't the only boy who lost his father that he must mourn him over all living beings, that was harsh, wasn't it Awan?
He didn't talk to me for five days and six nights after that. He told me once how a girl who cannot love her own parents would keep throwing her love on him, but he says Awan that I have never known what love is in the first place because I do not love my own birth parents, how insensitive? He also called me insensitive, selfish and narcissistic. He meant it. I know. I tell him a lot of things too. We go around all the time. But yet there has been more wounds silence have caused than words.

Awan, you were right, there is nobody who knows it better than me that he does not love me nor will he ever do...

Raib.