They Are Both Singing Out To Each Other, But Their Hearts Have Different Melodies
By Aditi Powar
He runs his hands lovingly over the auburn guitar, tracing the still moments that are long gone and yet that linger in his thoughts, sometimes as a memory, sometimes a tear. He applies pressure of his fingertips on the guitar strings, making the music float in the air, into the endless skies, into nothing, into everything.
He draws his fingers back till they are no longer touching the strings but the melodies remain, singing the same old tune even in silence, as they always have, all those years, like a memory. A still moment whose essence lasts even after it is gone.
It pulls the strings of his heart once again but this time it doesn’t bring back the feeling of elation. It just strikes a melancholic chord because the strings of his heart are now broken. The fingers that pull them, bruised. So they cannot really meet without evoking a broken tune and a persistent pain. But he doesn’t let the silence settle for long. His fingers work on the strings of both–his guitar and his heart. He waits for the wind to carry all the melodies to her, broken and the unbroken.
The music reverberates and floats in the abyss and echoes even in silence. It speaks of her. She is the melody that travels in the wind, the memory that lingers on.
She is the void that makes everything seem meaningless, the dream that is held on the eyelids. She is the silence that descends when his fingers pull away, the pain felt in his fingertips. She is the broken string of his heart.
He refuses to call out to her, refuses to give words to his voice because he doesn’t have a way with words. He knows the damage a wrong word can do. The shattering noise still echoes in his ears. His music talks for him. He lets the tunes speak his heart mainly because he doesn’t find a voice. When he does, he doesn’t find the words.
He waits to hear a sound that has tainted the most beautiful moments of his past. He is ready to give anything to hear it again. To hear her voice that is the only music that plays inside his head.
He hopes she would call out someday.
He knows he will always be waiting.
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And she, she watches the nature unleash its fury as the storm sweeps over, blowing past the tree tops. She waits for the roaring wind to blow away the pain, waits for the thunder to take away the silence, waits for the rain to wipe away the traces of her tears. She wraps a blanket of unsaid words around herself and waits for the warmth. But the chill of silence seeps through her skin and creeps into her heart.
She knows that she is not the same person he remembers anymore. Everything she wants to be is hidden in her heart, written in blood, in a language he doesn’t understand. Her eyes fail to reveal the secrets and he fails to read her silence. Every time there is a storm, she dwells in the quiet left by the storm in its wake. It speaks of her silence. Every time there is a pause between her words, she remembers the time when words were meaningless.. unnecessary. Her silence is tainted with the memories of those days. Sometimes it holds her together.
Sometimes it breaks her apart.
The storm subsides and the silence settles down again. It speaks of him. He is the word that dies on the lips, the tear that rolls down on the cheeks. He is the wish that goes unfulfilled, the prayer that is unanswered. He is the happiness that fills the world to brim, the pain that makes one empty from within. He is the hollow void of her heart.
She refuses to call out to him, refuses to give voice to her words because she is scared that she would call out and there would be silence. So she lets the silence speak her heart mainly because she doesn’t find the words and when she does, she doesn’t find the voice.
She closes her eyes and raises her head skywards letting the wind whisper in her ears and press kisses against her cheeks. She does not hear the whoosh of the wind. She is busy reading the silence in between.
She knows that he will always reside in that silence.
She hopes he would know the same someday.
He hears the voice behind the silence while she hears the silence behind the voice She remains wordless. While he waits…
In the end, he never hears her voice. She never reads his silence.