Paper Thin Love

She was never a lady of words. I don’t think I remember listening to her voice, like ever. But I never needed to, I had already fallen in love. She had green eyes. Endless, serene and a universe of it’s own. When I looked into them, everything else just disappeared as if the implicit insignificance of everything else was made bluntly explicit. What would remain was my soul soaked in love, floating in that green ocean of hers. I still vividly remember the first time I saw her. I always go to that place when I seek peace, answers to some questions and when I need to celebrate my existence. The air is always so quite there, even when you can see her playing with the river water resulting is waves melodious like a symphony. I can just sit there all day on that bank starring at the south-bound waters of the river. One feels healed as if the waters are eroding your confrontations as well. And that day, on that bench, I wasn’t alone.

There she was, shining like an ornament draped in a white dress with her hair moving effortlessly with the winds making patterns as if orchestrated by the unknown. For a moment, one would think, how nature sometimes outclasses itself by creations like her. She was like the perfect anomaly in this otherwise hideous world. In a moment, I had forgotten why I had come there at the first place. All I wanted now was, to see her. Perhaps she came to that place for the same reason as mine, for peace and tranquility. She was surely getting that as she sat silently ignoring the existence of any other soul in her vicinity. But what about my peace and my tranquility? She had snatched them away replacing them with ripples of anxiety below the chest. That’s not fair, I wanted to tell her. And everyone else too, I suppose. For several days I could not gather the courage to talk but I didn’t mind. I was happy sitting next to her everyday as she glanced over the sunset over the crimson waters of the river meanwhile making paper art. Yes, she was into origami.

“Hello”, I said one fine day. Seems plain enough, one would think, unless you look into the effort I had to put in, several days of mirror practice and sleepless nights fearing her look of rejection. But thank the gods, she smiled. She smiled! Oh, I can’t tell you exactly how I felt then. Or maybe I can, it felt like my heart just melted, and this I say with no exaggeration. She didn’t say anything though. But that’s okay. I can live for eternity with that smile. And then I started my endless blabber. I talked, talked and talked. She would listen very carefully reacting with her facial expressions. Looking at them, I felt the futility of having learned a language and of words, when one could say so much with their eyes, with their cheeky contours and with their smile. Days went by and I was running short of stories to tell. But she never spoke. Maybe she was never interested. Maybe she only came there to rejuvenate herself in that silence. Maybe she was in a relationship. And she just smiled to me for politeness sake. Even pity.

“I really like you”, I told her one day. Her eyes broadened to those words. There was silence. I could see the river waves, in her eyes, clashing. I could see the sun setting. I could see the birds disappearing over the horizon. I felt she wanted to say something but couldn’t. I felt she did say something, but those words never came out. She turned the other way and got back to her paper art. And there I sat confused what to make of it. After a while, she got up and stood in front of me, handed over to me two red paper swans and left. By the time I got myself out of her magical eyes, she was gone. I did not know if she would come back, or perhaps this was a parting gift. Something to remember her by, to remind me, that she was real.

For the next few days she didn’t come and that perhaps made me believe that I scared her away, that I took away her special place of peace. But she had too. For months I searched for another place of serenity but in vain. Lost in translation and pretty much tired, I went back to that place. There was no one there as I sat alone on that bench. I couldn’t breathe as I was drowning in nostalgia. I had told her everything about me, all the stories. And now she was gone. Amidst this melancholy, my gaze landed upon two Swans drifting playfully in the waters. Well, at least they made it through, I told myself.

~10 years later~

I was sitting in the drawing room playing with my little daughter.  I got married few years later after the disappearance of my mystic lady. It was arranged by my parents. She is a wonderful wife and mother. I can’t complain. She has gone out for some work and I have the entire responsibility to look after our princess. She was playing with her toys when she got hold of those two paper swans. I was afraid that she would tear them apart. I looked at her innocently hinting not to do such a thing. She perhaps understood and gradually opened up those swans perhaps hoping to find a candy inside. As good as tearing it up, I thought. There is no way we can make it back into swans, I sighed.

There goes my only memory of a rendezvous with that beautiful stranger, I wondered. But then I realized, there was something inked on the inside of those papers. I took them away from her gently and as my daughter started crying for having lost her toys, I too wanted to join her. Not for those swans, but for the words beneath. And there I sat in despair, in shock, desperate to fold those papers back into swans. I wanted those words to disappear. They carried with them my melancholic tale of love, of paper thin love.

 “I can’t speak. I am a mute”

“I like you too”