Autumn Musings: A story by Riddhi Bhatti

As I see through the window, everything looks so surreal. Nature adorned in hues of golden and crimson like a new bride. The strewn netted leaves tinkling at her slightest touch. The humming breeze filling the silence of autumnal dusk. And mild showers kissing the bare branches as they shrug.

You would remember. Do you? When we married last year around this time. Our college crush had finally blossomed into marriage. New aspirations, new horizons, a new life beckoned us both.

From where I sit today, I can still see that moor, a little uphill which we both would scamper like little kids on misty September evenings. And like that young couple under the isolated maple tree, we would stand for hours in the warmth of each other's breath.

People said sunsets looked sublime from the moor. But only I know how many of them have I missed gazing into your sunshine eyes.

And do you remember that elderly couple whom I looked up to, to tell you how I wished to grow old with you. They still sit on the same broken bench every evening, bird-watching.

As I narrate these beautiful moments to my diary, a crimson rose falls off.  It's the same rose with which you had once adorned my hair. So much as I had wanted to preserve it, it has still grown flaky, brown and withered. That's what time does to life. However much you may try to preserve a moment, a day, a season, it changes. And you keep gliding with it, sometimes reluctantly and sometimes readily.

Sometimes there is a sense of Deja Vu. Like a lost moment is ushering us. Like a season-long gone is coming back. But it never does, just a mind trick to beguile us. God is such an adept artist. He knows how to create a different picture each time, with the same old palette in hand.

This fall is also giving me a sense of deja-vu. It is opening up an old chest of memories. However hard I may try to beguile myself into believing, but the fact remains that my life isn't the same.

Your romantic greeting card, two kissing teddy bears and the erotic letter; are right beside my desk on the mantle. Only this time they aren't addressed to me. This recent discovery has turned my world upside-down. How, when and why did you do this, Who is this other woman, all these questions are seemingly irrelevant now. The bitter truth remains that the fall for me will never be the same as it once used to be. And however hard it may be, I have to accept it and hold on till the time thaws into another warmer season of life.