Our desire ebbs,
Reluctantly, in such bashful glee.
Our glances quiver,
Like the school of fish that create hullaballoo;

Mesmerized, we travel;
In directions unexplored.
Intoxicated, we discover;
Exotic nuances in the rituals of love.

****

Words are tricky things. Words are irritating things. Words are such powerful things. Words are mostly the only things.

These words from her diary brought back memories of such desire, that she had indulged in; when love’s agonizing prance had begun to take form in her heart.

The love now is afar. May be the love is almost a mirage.

But it didn’t matter to her anymore; whether he would infact truly return home. May be in reality, there is a point where fantasy and reality does merge. In which case he is home, infact. Sometimes one reaches a point of no return, she was in one such.

Her life now revolves around the word, patience. She has now spent a decade waiting. She often watches these spiders in her store that relentlessly try to spin complicated webs on the wall hoping to make a beautiful home for themselves, never giving up. She too is waiting, cleaning up the dirty attics, decorating the voluptuous beds, and concocting images of his home coming.

She scripts, directs and rehearses for hours, the moment of their unison; she has planned minutely how she would greet him when he finally got home someday.

If it is on a sultry sunset that he comes knocking, she would overwhelm him in a passionate embrace, massage his fatigued nerves, tickle his taut nipples and arouse in him sensations of ecstasy he had not known before.

If it is a dull humid dawn, she would bury her face against his chest and sob in a hushed tone. She would complain about the neighbors that mocked her, crib about the leaking tap, whine about the stinking garbage, chide him for his reckless vanishing act and narrate stories of lonesome mornings.

If it is a tiring lazy late afternoon, she would cast an enervated glance at him and fall to his legs hugging them tight, as if surrendering all of her to him. She would bawl, moan, blabber and recite meaningless poetry of love and lament.

If it is a silent night of chilly sufferings that he calls home, she would wail out aloud, venting out angst and anger, as if it were truly possible for her to be vengeful and vindictive.

Peace would then return, life would then have some meaning. She would hold his hands in hers and walk him to the store room. She would point out to those cobwebs on the wall, and pride herself by talking about the spider’s achievements; almost as if they were her children.

He would then be avid for her innumerable stories, the funny ones, the trivial meaningless ones, the one with eccentric protagonists . She would then bake him some cake, and feed him full. They would then dance to such music that bought them together, she will notice how he is as anxious as he used to be, trying to move his legs rhythmically and match steps with her dramatic steps. She would tease him, and he would return the favor. They would chuckle over silly jokes, try to win each other in ridiculous games and snuggle upto each other neck.

She brewed such dreams of eloquent euphoria every living second, of this moment when their lives would seamlessly melt into one another, when the flames of her ambition will taste bright illumination.

At the end of her tether, he would forget all about his being man and unabashedly tell her stories of his defeat and regrets. Of failures tasted, of hopes relinquished, of impossible loves, of conquers that slipped his hand.

The knowledge of his agony would then torment her like the pain of a child kicking at the womb. He would weep into her lap exasperated, and confess how he had longed too, to be away from the maddening battle of the idiosyncratic world. He would then ask her to hold him in her arms, pamper him like a newborn, and take him back in time to the innocence of his childhood or travel far ahead into life towards the peace of a graveyard.

Such ideas of their reunion filled her days and nights. It was on one such dreamy twilight, did the news reach her. ‘We won the battle’, her neighbors rejoiced. ‘The soldiers are on their way back home’, they told her. At the threshold she stood, exhausted, spent and drained of the dreamy opera she had lived through all these years.

And right at the moment of his arrival, famished by such immense joy that was almost alien to her, unable to bear the weight of such euphoric sensation, she collapsed into his arms. Her lips muttered something to him, but there was no sound. No words. Only those ebbs of desire.

Words are tricky things. Words are irritating things. Words are such powerless things. Words are sometimes nothings.

It didn’t matter to her anymore; whether he would infact truly return home.