There is a part of the sky that forgot how to move the day she looked at me like I was more than a flicker. It stiffened right above the fifth cloud where the weight of her name still sits on my chest like wet linen. The sun still wakes up but the light feels synthetic like someone drew it on a screen and forgot to switch it on. The clouds try to dance but I know they are lost. They spin in circles like they too are looking for her. Nothing up there changes anymore. They are all pretending.
Before her I read the sky like scripture. Rain meant sadness. Thunder meant guilt. Sunsets were guiltier. The light used to confess things I didn’t have the courage to say. But now even the storms feel fake. The moon peeks out like it’s unsure of its own glow. Maybe even the stars have stopped trying because they saw her once and understood they could never outshine something like that.
Someone told me skies change because time moves. But what if time gave up when her fingers brushed mine that evening. What if time bent its knees and stayed still. What if every second since then has been the same second looped. I walk through days like they are mirrors reflecting the moment she said my name like a prayer she didn’t believe in. I don’t think I’ve aged. I think I’ve just dried out in the silence.
There is a color I see now it isn’t blue not really but something bruised like a memory that got stuck in the throat. It bleeds behind my eyelids when I close them. It hums under my skin like a cold echo. It’s in every sky since her. The color refuses to leave even when it rains. Especially when it rains.
I tried making the sky new again. I painted mornings with borrowed light. I begged sunsets to give me something else to look at. I screamed into the wind hoping it would rearrange the clouds into something unfamiliar. But every horizon carries her outline. Every shadow is a repetition of her shoulder. The whole sky is a shrine now and I am the fool kneeling in it asking for nothing but more of the same ache.
People say skies don’t remember. That they move on each morning and begin again. But mine wore her once and that was enough. It wrapped her into its folds and said this is it we’re done evolving.
And I look up not to hope not to wonder but to witness. Because the sky may change for them. But for me it hasn’t moved since the moment I met her.
-aaditya
Aaditya Bajpai 