All My Love
October 04
Dearest,
I can barely hear the percussion, it’s so soft. A gentle tap on the floor cymbal, a light touch on the snare, a gentle hum of the bass and that’s all. It’s pleasant here. Somewhere in the distance, I can make out children laughing and if I strain just a little further, the light echoes of women singing down one of the hallways…a soothing lullaby.
You can fall in love here, and remember nothing the day after.
Swish-wish-swash. It’s easy to sleep to the sound of the waves lapping against the beach, progressing and receding- I wish you could hear them the way I do.
In the “real world”, we walk from cars to buildings and back to cars and forget everything in between, but here…
here it’s different. Here you stand to forget nothing, and will never forgive yourself if you do.
The tide carries in strange things. Like the other day, there was a broken bottle wedged so deep, it almost seemed as if it were planted by an unknowing hand. It wasn’t. I watched as it was carried by the water onto the shore and then back out, back in again until it was deposited on the wayside, a snug fit. I wondered then if you had left a message, and sent it out to sea, hoping it would find me somewhere.
I wondered for a moment
(just for a moment,)
who it was that had my note.
Then I realized you weren’t anywhere near the ocean or sea or any body of water in general. Besides, what would you write?
I’m smiling now
wearing your lopsided grin
among other things
And it would be easy, really – a bit too easy because sometimes it’s like I have nothing better to do than remember you. Remember us.
To my right are paneless windows and paper thin curtains that billow, actually billow when the wind kisses them. It’s beautiful. And when you look through, you see green grass and where it ends to meet sandy beach, before finally tiptoeing to the brink of an open sea.
And what can I tell you about the sea, love? It stretches for miles and miles until it meets the sky- conjoined twins- eying the boats chartering their waters maliciously.
There are flowers too, perched right outside my window. They live their days in clumps, separated by patches of mud. I wonder whether they long to be with the others just beyond the green that divides them.
Yes, I’m describing it to you. I’m writing it all, hoping you’ll read this and realize that things couldn’t have turned out any other way. But you were always a different story, a chapter in a book I hadn’t opened yet. Pandora’s Box, I have always wanted to know just who it was that unlocked you and set it free. Set you free.
And now I suppose, I never will and question whether this is just one of those things I’d rather not know. It might be someone I knew after all, or someone I passed in the street, brushed against on a train. Someone I’d like to strangle because it wasn’t me.
There’s sand in my shoes and between my toes too; it smuggles its way into my bed sheets and then vanishes the next morning. Like a secret lover, leaving its scent all over me, everything that’s mine to own, an invading presence at night and a stranger in the morning. How I miss you sometimes!
But don’t worry…
I’m not alone. I know that was your biggest fear. That when I came out to die,
I would choose to die alone,
secluded in my own cocoon.
But there are people here, and as long as the wind, sand and dew slither into my many lives, I think solitude is still a far off dream.
I kept the bottle, you know. The one that swept out to shore? I kept it, knowing that it would never bear your message as it will bear mine. I hope this finds its rightful namesake, tapping against a boat. Yours.
Somewhere, wherever you are.
You have as always,??
all my love.
Is this MP? What’s up, woman?
Good show. Are the quotes in italics from the actual letter in Message In a Bottle? Whatever! I think u wrote it prettier. Good show.
9/10. Yup I still rate. Ask anyone.
UT!! I thought it was you. Dude! NO MIB quotes, thank ye very much. Totally original. It came tumbling out of me when I saw the sea for the first time. Very humbling experience.
There’s a line missing from the conclusion, it seems. It should read:
“You have as always,
all my love”
Where are you? Why aren’t you on the site? We shouldn’t be having this conversation in the middle of a website reserved for comments.
Thanks for the rating. Don’t mind at all.
Yar busy busy life. DWL demands work and time, which I dont have. This one is slower, so that I can visit it whenever I want.
How are Jalal and others? Damn, its been a while since I wrote smth there, hasn’t it?
Too bloody long, really. And hello! We don’t demand a lot of work and time…things get slumpy there from time to time, which incidentally, is something we’re trying to work on. Jalal’s good – Afia’s getting married btw!
Obi’s a theatrical god now, apparently – he’s doing so well. Shehla’s still a biochemist. lol. Only the five of us are there from the old crowd. And you’re cheating on us…siigh. 
Drop a line there, sometimes. Even if it’s an odtm post.
Hey, I’m extremely sorry for that line missing thing Maryam, I’ll fix it right away. I don’t know where that line went in publishing. And I haven’t had a single second to even look at the site ever since I put up your post =(
Good work on the piece though, looking forward to more posts from you Insha’Allah
I read this again, MP. This is powerful stuff. Good show!
Thanks, UT.