Stories we will never tell - Wasted!

“It was a lazy summer sunset. The stars that shone brightly and beautifully in her chestnut eyes were somehow left unseen by the sea of people that swept past her. She was on her daily ritualistic long walk back to her apartment. Nothing unusual, nothing strange. She had done this hundreds of times - traversed the same stretch of sidewalk for the past few months. In fact she was so used to the neighbourhood that she knew the shapes that were made by the off-white paint that had peeled away from the walls of the house in which the old lady lived with her 3 cats.“

‘No, this doesn’t seem right. This definitely isn’t something worth writing!’ - he thought absent-mindedly while spinning the pen in between his middle and index fingers of his right hand. Here he was, sitting in the middle of the night, not knowing what to do with any of this; and not knowing where his life was headed. With only the chirping of crickets and the creaking of the rusted gate for company, he did what he always did - he hoped she would respond. He hoped she would reciprocate. But that’s what Einstein had called insanity - repeating the same thing again and again, while expecting different results. 

He thought he was going insane. Or was his inebriated mind playing tricks with him? These  and a million other thoughts filled his head as he read the last line he had written - “In fact she was so used to the neighbourhood that she knew the shapes that were made by the off-white paint that had peeled away from the walls of  the house in which the old lady lived with her 3 cats.“ Should he even be typing this? He knew she wasn’t a cat person! She loved dogs, not cats! She has a dog! Why did he even type ‘cats’?

And just as his intoxicated self cursed at his cowardice and at himself, just as his body slowly collapsed on to the bed whose sheets were filled with blue orchids and yellow chrysanthemums, just as he was curling up into the blanket, the last thoughts that filled his brain were of her - that even though she would not respond, he could still be content with the knowledge that she was safe and happy. Not forever, not all the time, but hoping that the feeling would last for a while. Or at least until he gets to drink again, he finally thought before slipping into unconsciousness!