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My Breath comes out cold as I wonder in this frosty winter night. My feet leaving prints on the fine, crunchy ice. After trudging for some time I stopped and looked back. All I could see is the snowy white ice and on it, looking like dark halo, imprints of my feet. Not at all elegant…the way they used to be, the gait has lost its grace. They are uncertain, heavy and stumbling steps. For some time, I sit there wishing for these prints to vanish, staring at them as if only staring would make the ice melt and fill those spaces known to be print of my feet.
When the fingers of my feet protested for the intense cold, l sigh, making a frosted white cloud in front of my face. “This cold and ice is so strange,” I thought. “You walk on it and your feet and body will remain warm, alive. Stop at it and it eats you up. Just like sadness…walk over it and you will remain warm, alive but stop at it… you suffocate and die.”
Darkness around me and the earth shining bright under my feet, I again walk ahead. The snake-line imprint of my feet following me everywhere I go. On the path, all the trees are bare with naked limbs intermingled, giving somewhat an eerie look. The path leads to a lake, all frozen. Taking small steps I reach it. Feeling an unknown dread I take a peep in it. The clear icy surface shows a face with dangerously dull eyes, colorless lips and mattered hair.
‘Who is she? ’ I wander.
The fear inside me holding me back, stopping me from acknowledging the answer I already knew.
‘It is you…’ the wind whispers in my ears. Stooping again…I look into those eyes; I extend my hand, the ‘person’ extents her hand too.
I touched it, so icy cold…shivers pass me.
‘This is me…’ was it a question or a remark??
A tear fell on the icy surface, I withdraw my hand and without looking back stand up, vacating that place which showed me my identity, my reality.
I now walk with a heavy heart, wishing this darkness swallows me up…makes me a part of it. This way I won’t have to bear those dull, vacant eyes and those colorless lips. Parted as if asking questions, those questions whose answers the mind knew but the heart doesn’t want to acknowledge.
I am running away from inevitable. I am afraid to voice aloud my fears. I want to pretend that everything is fine, the same. The sun shines…the moon spreads its glow and the stars twinkle in the vast velvety black sky….but then why is it so cold…??
The tail of footprints still following me, I creep through the silent cold night…hugging my own self, for in all this obscurity and draftiness…my body is the only asylum which tells…there’s Hope.
And I moved on…