The pages of my journal ruffled yet again to remind me of the prior engagements I had with myself to resurrect the old memories and eradicate them once so that their lack of existence would renew me.

It’s odd how in the end nothing but a faint smell of the potpourri you once smelled or the touch of the hot gold mantle piece above the fireplace gets stuck in your brain. How the sensation of the first drop of rain feels on your naked skin mingled with countless tears. I wonder yet again…unsure if I truly should remove any recollection of that dawning night I spent with him.

We were walking side by side on the empty road towards his apartment; my shoulder grazing against his upper arm, the mere touch seemed like a comfort.

“So yer leavin’ tonight, right?” I asked wiping my nose with the back of my shirtsleeve. He heaved a heavy sigh in response probably because I had asked him this question a total of twenty seven times. I sniffed again this time, trying to hold back a lump that had formed in my throat. I blinked back tears.

“I can leave you at your apartment coz I would be packing up my stuff now,” he said in his deep indifferent voice. I just glanced at him knowing that he would not even bother to look at me. In his mind I did not exist. I mumbled a response, not that it mattered; his plans never changed.

The clouds thundered and an ice-cold tear from the heavens descended on my cheek.

“It’s raining,” I said trying to end the embarrassing silence between us. He, of course, didn’t reply. At one point in time both of us loved rain. People change I guess, while time becomes stagnant with pungent memories.

“This is called drizzling, Reem,” he said in an exasperated tone. He was right, you could hardly call it rain; it was just soft moist wind.

As we approached the dirty brick stairs of my apartment I tried one more time to crack through the wall he had created between us.

“Can I come with you? I could help you pack,” I said trying my best to spend some more time with him, to convince him not to let go.

“Can’t make it girl, I leave in six hours,” he said patiently.

Despite my control that I had been holding on to by a shabby thread, tears rolled down from my eyes. I guess God did not want him to know that I had, at last, lost my battle because the heavens opened up in a thunderous cry, roaring the agony that I felt in my heart. While huge drops of rain started pelting down on us. Now nobody could know that I was crying, not even my beloved Shaukat.

He dashed forward climbing my stairs in a rush to stay out of the rain cursing loudly. While, I gave him a feeble smile between my tears, my brain going into a numb silence. My mind went into a static mode not ready to get entangled in the bombardment of my thoughts, which scudded around in my heart. My heart fought against my will to leap with joy but I held on to my frail control. “You can come up until the rain stops. It seems as if it will be a quick one, it will go away soon,” I said flatly dodging him with my tone in order to convince him.

He stared up at the sky with a frown “Do you still have that umbrella you stole from the mall?” he asked, not trying for humour but I laughed anyway discharging a heavy breath that I wasn’t even aware I was holding.

“Yeah I do, it’s in the storeroom. You can have a cup o’ coffee while I look for it.” He nodded, still looking at the sky nearly glaring at it.

I fumbled in my purse for my apartment keys while he stood behind me, piercing me with his eyes, obviously silently blaming me for the rain. I inserted the key and opened the door to my cramped two-room apartment, hastily removing my scarf and throwing it on the small cherry wood table that stood on the right side of the door.

He strolled inside taking his jacket off and putting it on the coat stand. I sauntered in the kitchen and turned on my coffee maker while my heart danced to the music of rain. “It won’t take me a minute.” I hollered from there, “you can turn on the TV if you want.”

I bustled out of the kitchen smiling briefly at him while he looked around my apartment as if he was here for the first time. I walked towards my storeroom rehearsing a speech in my mind, a way in which once and for all I could collect all my feelings for him and prove them, since they were my last attempt to ignite the feelings he had buried under the thick layers of his new demeanor. I scrounged around for the umbrella in my storeroom and hurried back, halting abruptly. He was holding the frame that had a picture of both of us, which was taken last year. He must have heard me coming because he then said, “You look so happy Reem,” and continued “Oh well…so be it.”

‘We were…we were happy, Shaukat,’ I thought. He looked up focusing on my face as if his thoughts were far away. The coffee maker beeped loudly crashing the almost comfortable silence between us with the slightest caress. I went to the kitchen without uttering a word, my thoughts far from happy.

I came outside juggling the coffee mugs in my hand only to find him putting his jacket on. I looked at him my heart leaping from my chest as if someone had wrenched it away savagely. Tears stung at my eyes and the speech that I had prepared and embedded in my brain vanished without a sign.

“Ar…re you leaving?” I questioned him.

“Yep,” he murmured back “Now where’s that umbrella that we were talking about?”