Four minutes to midnight

Toss. Turn.
Blink. Breathe.
Stare ahead. Surrender.
Parched lips. Pitter Patter.

A slap in the face from a pillow that got tired of drying tears aroused the screams I had silenced. They came together imitating Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream and in a stern voice whispered words in a language I alone understood –
“ Be. Beyond the reach of the ordinary.”

Here she is now, writing about the ordinary.

Lost in the vast sea of thoughts lapping the folds of our minds, going on and on as life goes on, some ideas come through in re-iterated waves of déjà vu, others don’t make it to the shore. I like to imagine them in a circular room that is whiter than the purest white you have come across, the squeaky clean glass floors reflecting glittering lights from the chandelier above. There are identical wooden doors with intricate sculpturing all around the room , locked away behind each door is a lost trail of thought.
Who do these trails lead to ? The guy in House Gryffindor shirt I had seen on the Souled Store, standing at the crossing of roads wearing headphones recording the sounds of the streets with a small mike ? Or that uncle with a condescending smile ranting about how the government could ban cigarettes instead of telling them to quit smoking because it is injurious to health but they won’t cause it profits them, while he took a cynical drag, with his friend ? Or the aunty at the bus stop who asked me what time it was ? How many such impressions have I left on strangers?
For some reason it reminds me of breaking open a fortune cookie.

The forebodings of future repeating itself like the past haunts me. All the thing am certain of, seem so far away, lost in the banalities of today, like every other day. People come at me with the - “just another semester, a few more months”. It’s not that. It’s that I would rather be anywhere but writing these lines. Anywhere but watching another TV show. Anywhere but zoning out on another lecture at college. Anywhere but trying to find expression, find meaning through art. Anywhere but reading a book as I watch the moving spectacles from a window seat. Anywhere but exhausting myself of every passionate distraction I find. I would rather be anywhere but here.

There is an antique pendulum clock housed in her old soul. It swings along with the changing times (cliché ? ).  She built it in another lifetime. So long ago that she has lost track of time. Now, she could me smiling and be at her best in the morning and be seen offing herself moments later, lost in depths of despair or just dreading the thought of having to get through another mundane day until she finds something that catches her attention for a while before she slips back into darkness.  

Darkness, he comes and goes as he pleases. Devouring my stories like I were his favourite dessert. And I let him, am darkness’ favourite dessert since that one time I asked him if he had gotten so thirsty, he drank his tears. It is his shoulder I will rest my head on when tears come easy, smiles come easy and the pretences come easier.