Pieces

“A star falls from the sky and into your hands. Then it seeps through your veins and swims inside your blood and becomes every part of you. And then you have to put it back into the sky. And it's the most painful thing you'll ever have to do and that you've ever done. But what's yours is yours. Whether it’s up in the sky or here in your hands. And one day, it'll fall from the sky and hit you in the head real hard and that time, you won't have to put it back in the sky again.” - C. Joybell C

          There was a familiar lull in the air that wafted past me as I sat here. The cushioned rocking chair seemed comfortable, although I'd tucked a stone under the chair support. I didn't want any rocking anymore. Enough rocking had been done. The room remained silent in the way that a cemetery stays silent in the after-hours of the night. No sound, and yet the silence remains deafening. The poorly-oiled ceiling fan creaked overhead, while it couldn't spin to save its life. Two oil lamps sat on the side-table, out of which one had gone off the night before after I'd gotten off the phone with her once it was all over. She'd gifted me those. A half-hearted cigarette stayed tucked between my two out of five fingers, and I'd probably forgotten it was even there. My eyesight rushed past the window and into the night, and I realised that the world beyond this window had nothing in store for me, that the night beyond this window stayed cold and lifeless. Which is probably what people saw when they looked past the windows of my eyes; a soulless night that lies cold and lifeless.

          There's a comfort in knowing that no matter how much the noises made by a crowd are, they can never overpower the drum-rolls and cacophonies created by a silent night with no life around. Sometimes I still think about the day I first saw her. How her cascading long hair glistened in the faint rays of sunshine that seeped in through the crevices of the curtains. She reminded me of a snowy Christmas morning.

          Soon after, I was shot down by my snow-angel through no fault of anyone's but mine, and I lay there in that zone that belonged to a different dimension, with my pieces scattered all across the floor. And as I lay there, split into a million pieces, I thought to myself that maybe this was what was supposed to happen. Maybe love is not what supersedes all. Maybe there are things that one learns along the way of life. Maybe we don't need to hear that it'll get better, because when was the last time you remember it truly getting better? It doesn't. It's a fight that people put up with themselves, where there's only one winner. There's too much baggage that everyone carries around on their backs; too many pieces of everyone scattered all across the time zones of their life. Every once in a while when the baggage becomes too heavy to be carried by ourselves alone, or when there are so many pieces being collected that some start to fall from the gaps between our arms, we feel like we need someone else to help us with a shoulder for our baggage, or collect the pieces of our lives and help us stick them back together so that one fine day we can be whole again. But that's not true. Sometimes, the people that you'd expected to come through during times like these may have a million pieces of their own to collect and put back together, and you can't blame them for it. Let's face it, you're not the only broken one out there. Everyone is, in their own way. And you can't always expect them to provide for you. Because sometimes, through no fault of anyone's, you might be all alone. You might be all that you have. And maybe someday, you won't be able to collect all your pieces and put them back together. You might have to leave some of them behind. The world can take a slightly broken you, a slightly incomplete you. It doesn't make you any weaker. You have to believe in the fact that you'll be better off without the pieces of your past. Trust this process, this system. Find the beauty in it. You'll have the sun shining out of you one day. All you have to do at the end of the day,

is let go.