Time.
Only I know how long it takes. For four years to slip by, day by day, like little grains of sand in some ancient hourglass- every moment caught and lost in its navel.
My stomach clenched. His fingers passed right by. In the one moment that fluttered beneath my skin, an eternity passed between us.
"I can't remember the last time," he said "It has been that long."
I smiled briefly. Another minute, I knew, with practiced patience. Four years and one minute.
The room emptied systematically- plates and people were locked away with little ticks and clicks. The doors shut.
Dessert was offered. A common meal-time courtesy that also served as a prelude to...
The lines were blurred with laughter, the peripheries fell away. It was just us- he and I- in a dimensionless reality. The breath caught in our throats.
An instant, it took- for hair to unfurl, clothes to slide over. That grain of sand took longer to descend, as I drunk in... the breadth of him.
"His wingspan," I corrected myself. I tried to collect it in my arms.
"I need a minute," he said.
He did not take long to tell me "This can happen only this one time".
Each of my hovering questions dissolved one by one in answering pleas in the widening aperture of his eyes. I fell inward. And then, we could See the image of each other.
Time.
He had aged just as myself. I followed so close, the footfall of my times linearly aligned to his. This time that had gone by was the same for both of us, in our symmetric geminate lives. I perched upon the hour hand, reading his minutes, knowing that in some roundabout manner he will arrive at the place I'm already at. We met in the middle.
At midnight, the needles align. A second passes and a whole day is born. Similar were our few snatched moments of togetherness; nay, congruence. I understood enough to wait another four, forty, four hundred years. The walkway of our times was marked by the same obscure milestones of smiles and sorrows, humour, vengeance and deceit; other lifetimes ground to its dust.
"I don't know how to explain it" he said.
I smiled. He didn't need to. I understood. His eyes were my looking-glass.
I picked up my bag of stories and, bidding him farewell, walked along our time-path.
Later, or sooner, I know we will pace ourselves to meet again.
Time.
The hustle and bustle, the intertwining of so many lives, the traffic of humanity. What was the time?
1513 hrs by my watch. Is that all the time I had spent with him? Even the touch of his hand on my cheek had faded away.
"Have the time of your life," he had said to me. There was so much that I had learned.
1513 hrs, said my watch; the timer on the traffic lights dwindled to single digits; a jet streaked its contrails amid the clouds; I smiled all the way back home.
Time.
Only I know how long it takes. For four years to slip by, day by day, like little grains of sand in some ancient hourglass- every moment caught and lost in its navel.
My stomach clenched. His fingers passed right by. In the one moment that fluttered beneath my skin, an eternity passed between us.
"I can't remember the last time," he said "It has been that long."
I smiled briefly. Another minute, I knew, with practiced patience. Four years and one minute.
The room emptied systematically- plates and people were locked away with little ticks and clicks. The doors shut.
Dessert was offered. A common meal-time courtesy that also served as a prelude to...
The lines were blurred with laughter, the peripheries fell away. It was just us- he and I- in a dimensionless reality. The breath caught in our throats.
An instant, it took- for hair to unfurl, clothes to slide over. That grain of sand took longer to descend, as I drunk in... the breadth of him.
"His wingspan," I corrected myself. I tried to collect it in my arms.
"I need a minute," he said.
He did not take long to tell me "This can happen only this one time".
Each of my hovering questions dissolved one by one in answering pleas in the widening aperture of his eyes. I fell inward. And then, we could See the image of each other.
Time.
He had aged just as myself. I followed so close, the footfall of my times linearly aligned to his. This time that had gone by was the same for both of us, in our symmetric geminate lives. I perched upon the hour hand, reading his minutes, knowing that in some roundabout manner he will arrive at the place I'm already at. We met in the middle.
At midnight, the needles align. A second passes and a whole day is born. Similar were our few snatched moments of togetherness; nay, congruence. I understood enough to wait another four, forty, four hundred years. The walkway of our times was marked by the same obscure milestones of smiles and sorrows, humour, vengeance and deceit; other lifetimes ground to its dust.
"I don't know how to explain it" he said.
I smiled. He didn't need to. I understood. His eyes were my looking-glass.
I picked up my bag of stories and, bidding him farewell, walked along our time-path.
Later, or sooner, I know we will pace ourselves to meet again.
Time.
The hustle and bustle, the intertwining of so many lives, the traffic of humanity. What was the time?
1513 hrs by my watch. Is that all the time I had spent with him? Even the touch of his hand on my cheek had faded away.
"Have the time of your life," he had said to me. There was so much that I had learned.
1513 hrs, said my watch; the timer on the traffic lights dwindled to single digits; a jet streaked its contrails amid the clouds; I smiled all the way back home.
Time.
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