11/15/12

An Afternoon Requiem
By Jolly Jacob


She's watching the window intently, as the wind picks up the stormy rain and lashes it against the glass. As though Nature was throwing a huge tantrum and flinging the elements about. She finds it soothing somehow. The turbulence outside is more than a match for the chaos inside her and it subsides in the face of the competition. Drops hit the glass with clattering ferocity, break apart and fly back to join the driving wind and the uproarious rain. And the remnants join up with others and slide down the glass in trembling rivulets. As if in response to the increasing calm within her, the wind slowly dies down too, and now there's only a steady beat of rain, that flicks an occasional drop towards the window, so that drops now hang clutching at the glass, defying gravity until they swell enough to slide away.

In the moisture-laden calmness, the air heavy with the secrets that the rain and wind have gathered from far away and dispersed into people's rooms - the sighs of heartbreak and the soft whispers of dreams crumbled, in the hearts of strangers - she feels her own heart swell and strain against the steel of her heart walls. Walls she had started putting up a long time ago, when orphaned suddenly, she had gone to live in her aunt's house, the youngest there, the most vulnerable and the most unwanted. Smiling through tears, laughing through rejection, excelling in academics to compensate for her loss everywhere else. Slowly and unknowingly to her, she had built up her walls, added layers, and bolts and latches to her aching heart, her defense against the pain of loneliness and rejection. Silken and unshakeable, she had slowly but surely marked her ascension in the corporate world through one remarkable success after another. But she had allowed none to conquer her heart. It was to remain untouched, insulated against any possible pain. Men looked at her with respect, or flattering obeisance, a mask for the envy they felt and sometimes the lust that glimmered momentarily in their eyes till she gazed it away.

Her gaze shifts away from the window for a moment. When she looks back at it, to her utter surprise, there is a red drop sitting there, like a perfectly formed drop of blood, taut and turgid. It takes a few moments for her brain to tell her that it could be the reflection of something red falling on the drop of water. But somehow, that tantalizing image of the blood-red drop makes her think of Him. Her gaze immediately shifts to her wrist, and she caresses the soft skin with the tips of her fingers. The veins stretch blue against the pale skin, thin tributaries carrying life, and she can see her pulse throbbing. Anticipation makes it throb faster and she feels the beat echo loudly in her chest. Desire courses through her body and she feels a slight chill shiver through her spine. Her breath quickens on the thought of the razor blade, sitting in a drawer nearby, waiting to be picked up and sliced through the soft skin of her wrist, the supple veins and the elastic tendons.

Will He come quickly, she wonders, will His touch be painless? Or will her body convulse in agony as it does with pleasure? Will her moans in pain be as ecstatic as her joyous ones? Which part of her will He enter first? How long will it be before she reaches the peak of agony and succumbs into His dark arms, its comforting numbness and its obliterating surrender? Her Dark Knight, taking her into the night forever.

The rain outside already seems to be singing the Requiem.


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About me : Writer, poet, photographer, and lover of nature. Living in New Zealand.