It's A Love Story

By Pooja Pasricha

Rummaging frantically through his brain for lost memories, as if looking through his old coat pocket for a letter he was sure he had kept, for the love of his life.

Like rifling through old files for a certain specific one.

He looks dishevelled, unkempt, befuddled.

He is certain he will find them, he sees fragments of her;

her golden hair against the fading evening light;

a flash of her athletic calves;

her raucous laugh;

he can even smell the torte she baked,

he smacks his lips, drooling a little, the taste of the cake lingering on his tongue.

He begins to call out, but her name gets lost in his mouth.

He simply cannot see her face.

It's a blank.

Like a sheet of white paper.

He continues scraping, digging, raking;

he knows he will see her;

she's hiding in the most precious corner of his memory.

In some distant recess of his brain he can even hear her.

Her raspy unwomanly voice. He chuckles at that.

He cannot recall who she was.

Graceful, poised and steadfast, she sits besides the man she knew once;

only witnessing flashes of his old self.

She is grateful for those precious moments, brief as they are, when he looks at her with absolute clarity.

She prates on unyeildingly about their lives together,

clasping his old wrinkled hands in hers.

Their pulses beat in perfect rhythm as their love echoes off one another.

By Pooja Pasricha