Mnemosyne

"Aasai mugham maranda poche idhai
Yaaridam sholvenadi thozhi"

I cannot remember your face. I cannot remember your face! It's...lost, blurred, undefined now.After all these years of carrying you with me-my very own taveez-you've relinquished your hold on me. Your death grip has loosened and I can breathe again.

But I cannot remember your face anymore. Your laughter haunts my ears, resounding waves in a conch, the soft sussurations of foam on the sand, but your face eludes me. Your silences are a part of my breath, structuring its beat, controlling my life but your face...is gone.

Your touch remains embossed on my skin, against my shoulder, a finger caressed in passing; that fire has not died down yet. Your face, though, is now submerged under a tide of forgetfulness, sweeping shores clean of broken shells luminescent in the dawn light-heartlight.

Love's driftwood, becomes stone in the end.

Arc Lights

The lights came on, washing the wooden stage in a shimmer of violet and indigo, lighting up the spires of the cathedral-making them glow. All of a sudden, the stage turns to stone and the lights stab out into the darkness-searchlights, strong, unwavering, waiting for its next victim.

A girl all in black, steps out from the arch and stands there, right in the middle of those twin beams. A half murmur, half gasp runs through a rustling hall. Her face is hidden by the shadow of a man.Abruptly all murmurs cease, switched off by the simple motion of her now uplifted face. Pale, pure and proud she stands, unafraid and unmoved. Only she knows of the telltale beads of salt dotting her knees and back, pulsing with the restrained thunder of her racing heart.

There were no microphones, that first time. Just her voice.Ringing out true and clear amidst the misty shadows that wreathed eager faces in white scarves of fog. Her voice, rising and falling with cadences as old as stories. It talked to them about pain, grief and despair-the eternal human condition- and they could not help but be caught up in the retelling of their sorrow.

They watched her hands weave another world for them, where the mountains rose so high they shut the sun out from her world. They watched her eyes weary of dreams being trampled under the dusty boots of travellers to her inn. They saw her body crumple under the weight of her thwarted ambitions and then...the lights went out.

But she stood there, glowing now under the light of the applause shimmering over her, radiant face in its hues of ivory, now pink, now smoky gray .....now iridescent purple and blue, absorbing and reflecting the shadows of the audience intensity.

For her, the arclights don't ever fade out.