Platonic Love
Chapter 3
Back in the streets, you are getting ready to leave for home. A call diverts your attention. The flashing screen shows thirty five missed calls.
Haruhi, where are you? Your mother-in-law is weeping harder this time; you can almost see the rivers of tears smarting her crinkled soft face, amidst a dark background behind your closed eyelids. You imagine her shoulders heaving in jerks, each heave more forceful than the previous one.
The orchestra the traffic is conducting is hindering your hearing. Cars speed by, leaving trails of power-fuelled groans. Trams 'tink-a-link' the walkway, the alighting bells whispering soft hymns in response to passing bits of music blasted from nearby lolita shops.
Tama- he- Tamaki just passed away..
Streetlights are shooting comets into the Tokyo sky. You look up expecting to glimpse spaceships landing. Surely he is much stronger than that, no?
These words repeat in your mind. Your phone clatters to the ground, the screen breaks and small gears spill out like entrails from a sow during harvest; an enraged pursing meteor has collided with fragile china.
Tamaki just passed away.
Tamaki just passed away.
Tamaki just passed away…
Soon, it all dawns down.
You run. Fast, abandoning those horrid killer shoes, into vast nothingness as far as you can see. The passer-bys and streetwalkers your eye chooses not to notice. Your body pummels off many others but you don't feel a thing.
Can hear this soul?
It's
crying
My soul is crying
Calling out to You
Will You come
and wash over me
Like only You can do
Bitter taste of after-sex wine lingers in your mouth. The honeyed tang of the other man plays on your tongue; and his touches burns your body. You want to throw it all out, retch forth the accumulated unease slicing your soul and hurting your insides and retrieve the lost love you've distanced yourself from that genuine husband of your.
You run into the path of a bus. Tires screech, shrill, warily, expressing a funeral song for the deceased one. A double-decker stops a centimetre away from your nose. Then, your eye catches an advertisement on a bus- it is clearly a photoshopped image of your husband in the pink of health with his megawatt smile, before his god-forsaken illness. People don't normally notice busses, unless you are about to me hit by one. The bus glows eerily and seemingly, like a faraway bazaar. From the image your husband conveys the cliché catch phrase to audiences; Eat Nissin Noodles and you will be as hot as me. You remember the time he took it- it was two years ago when he was twenty five. He was tanned and lean, with a six pack that many adolescents' males would kill to have. Just like a model. Advertising instant noodles was a dream he held since high school.
Your husband had many dreams and wishes. He would always share them with you over usual gourmet salads with a dash of premium olive oil. In the deepened dusk, you pass by a lamprey eel shop and remember how your husband showed a liking for skewered livers. Through the leaden shroud of fatigue, you recall that night on the peak of Mount Fuji- the time he proposed to you surrounded by the world's supply of dancing fairy lights. It was daytime under a sky of dusk. Done with reminiscing, you realize something. That he won't be there to hold your hand and nuzzle your cheeks when you lay in bed, dreadened with fever or when you startle from a nightmare the left of the bed will be empty. High school events are distant memories and the future must be faced with no regrets.
Alas now. The sobbing chokes you've always held back, now you release them gratifyingly.
The field of vision is narrowed and blurred. You dodge vehicles hogging the roads and throngs of people equally, and get through that horrible stretch with unbelievable grace. The street is a human gridlock. Influx of people brushes your heaving shoulders, never stopping to enquire the source of your tears. The city never dies. Your legs keep moving forward and you gravitate towards a bus stop.
Go, you say to no one in particular. Why did you have to go?
And you keep sprinting on, till you reach a meadow and let darkness wash over you.
Can You feel this heart?
It's beating
Like a drum it's beating
It's calling out to
You
Will You come and rain on this desert heart
Like only You
can do
Can hear this soul?
It's crying
My soul is crying
Calling out to You
Will You come and wash over me
Like
only You can do