The Secret

When you lock a secret inside someone, you lock inside them a little part of you.
                        *****
 A clear blue sky. A deserted road with trees planted on both sides. Silver decorations on poles tied along the way rustled in the wind tirelessly, long after the festivities. There was no one, only you and me at the very beginning of it. It was only when we turned back that I paused to listen to the rustling. "This makes me feel like a princess", I told you. " Though I know these decorations were meant for neither of us." "Yes, you do remind me of a princess sometimes", you said.

The rest of it I hardly remember. Perhaps we mused on how great the weather was or how pleasant it is to be away from everyone and everything. Earlier on a different day, shortly after I had acquainted with your peculiar self, you had for no particular reason assured me you meant no harm. Strange, unlike with most others, somehow trusting you came naturally. I knew you meant no harm even when we were strangers. Often I found myself in the company of others. People were always around me. And even when they were absent they were in my head. I belonged to all and therefore to none. I empathised with most but never could identify with any. Everything and everyone was only the essential other for my selfish Self. I was alone and I was happy. I looked in the mirror and I was the invisible blue woman. If the world was water I was painted in oil. I was at a time in the world and wasn't.

I read books. Read history. Read philosophy. Read fantasy. Fiction. Poetry. The more I tried to understand human relationships the more it fascinated, baffled and saddened me. Most of the times, I felt I was from a different plane of existence separated by time and space. I constantly questioned my sanity. By the time you came around, I was convinced that I was a lunatic evading capture. A lone solipsistic cell existing alone, at a single point in a dark expanse of ether. Since this meant that most people were the products of my own imagination I felt less guilty about objectifying them. But you came along and  I found myself questioning my convictions. I could no longer assure myself that people were creatures my mind had conjured out of nothing. There was no way I was capable of imagining something as original as you. I was intrigued by you because you were beyond me.

You know what is funny? It was so similar to two sane people meeting in a mental asylum. They would immediately recognise the sanity in the other. Only, here it was perhaps the other way around. Then again, I believe, normal is a word mediocre people use to define their mediocrity.

You were the jet that cut my pleasant solitude into two giant masses of loneliness by fleeting across my sky. I was not in love with you. Nor were you my family. Neither were we intimate friends, so to speak. But you brought with yourself the relief that one feels when one sees a countryman in a strange foreign land.

At various times I saw in me the elements of nature. Like the wind that cannot be contained without creating havoc. I was the wind and so were you. Staying in a place, falling into stagnation and routine, only meant transformation into an all destructing storm. And so, though it saddened me, deeply, when you had to go, I understood why.

But even in all your peculiarities you didn't forget to leave behind a keepsake for an old acquaintance. You neatly wrapped me a gift and left me gently. Just like you came, you were gone. People caught in their constant chatter and tiring lives forgot to notice the star that had vanished from the night sky. You were the embodiment of everything I feared existence could be. Beautiful, uncertain, mortal. Unlike diamonds, holding no promise of a forever.

 Long after you were gone I opened the wrapper and saw that you had left a secret inside for me. And in letting me into that secret you had let me have the tiniest part of you to keep. A bit of your soul in exchange for eternal remembrance and affection. The secret looked at me with the same gentle eyes as you. And once again I found myself smiling.