The song

I walk the streets that I have walked thousands of times for the last nineteen years of my life. I trudge through them. Mind churning with the thoughts of the notes I still have to revise. I shifted, my backpack flung across my back.

My entrance exam for the university that I have always dreamed about getting into is scheduled for tomorrow.

My stomach rolled with anxiety. Heaviness replaced the blood in my veins. It thrums, coils, and weighs on my heart.

I know there is something I have not studied. Something I don’t remember accurately. Something I have not paid enough attention to. There is always something left. 

You are not good enough. You are trying in vain. Do you actually think you can do this? So foolish of you. When everyone around you told you, warned you, to stop trying but you have to go and sit by the precipice. And now you will watch yourself fall into its miserable depths.

I do not know if I will pass the exam. I’d failed the exam last year. But I’d vowed to get into the University this time. No matter what. Thoughts of failure rule me these days. And sleep is a phantom of lost dreams I chase each night.

The past year had been a blur of notebooks scrawled with notes, pens, stacks of books clattering every available surface of my room and the house I lived in with my parents.

I can’t sit idle for a moment. My thoughts would dance a thousand different grotesque dances in a span of breaths. And my heart, my mind, would not quiet. They like to race and I like to chase them.

Walking every day to the library vexes me. As it is an immense waste of time. Time, so precious that it can ruin my future. If I let go of the reins.

But I enjoy the warmth, the comfort, the protection, of being ensconced by thousands of books. So I tolerate and brave the twenty minutes walk to the library every day. The trouble pays me, so I endure it.

The horns blaring, the hubbub of people flooding the roads, the shuffle of the feet on the cobbled sidewalks, rattle me. I pull out my earphones and plug them in. I play some soft instrumentals to set my buzzing mind at ease. Each step I take to reach my destination is excruciating. It feels like every single cobblestone mocks me. Taunts me about how I am losing time with each press of my sneakers against them.

I try to ignore them each day. But I can’t ignore them. I look at the faces of strangers. Smiles blossoming on their faces like the fairest of the spring day. Like they have the life they dreamed of. And bathe in its resplendent glory every day. I avert my eyes away from them. Trying to zone out and get lost in another world. A world full of my fulfilled dreams. The one I have sowed, watered, and pruned for years.

The sun is waning. Tucking away its transparent, golden sheets; permitting the darkness to sweep the skies under its onyx cover. My heart too oozes with darkness-tainted thoughts. And how I despise the dark. For it descends and thieves me of another priceless day. Another bright hour of my fleeting life.

My head turns to the park beside the sidewalk. The joyful shades of flowers grinning under the darkening sky. The darkness does nothing to subdue their radiance. How daringly vibrant they are?

The sound of children shouting in a harmonious melody shrills my soul. The smiles on their faces shoot a jagged pain like glass searing my heart. Their carelessness feels like salt to my bleeding wound. How reckless they are to waste their time like this.

I do not resent them. I pity them. For they don’t understand the worth of time. Brutal time only presented people with their desires and dreams only if they are faithful and loyal followers of his.

An ache builds in my soul. The track changes and a singer’s voice drifts to my ears and penetrates my fogged senses. “Sweetheart, when was the last time you saw the world without a blindfold”. Her words stopped me dead in my tracks. I pause in the middle of the bustling street. I close my eyes for a moment. 

The sweet, haunting, luring cadence of the singer illuminates parts of me I had shoved deep down into a lost cavern of my heart.

And I wonder when was the last time I’d seen something. Saw something. And not march to my destination in a learned habit. In a synchronized manner. Working like a programmed machine.

“All the dreams you chase. Did you forget to chase the moon? Do you still look up at the sunset with a blooming smile? Remember how we danced till the light joined the darkness?” The singer sings. I feel like she is asking me. Questioning me.

The lyrics of the song ricochets in my head. And I ponder on the words. There was a time when the sound of music drugged me. It was an elixir, something I needed to survive. Like one needs food, air, or shelter.

I reach out with my phantom fingers of mind to touch the soft and pliant body of the song. I trace the features etched on its face like mapping a constellation in the sky. The curve of its smile, the glitter in those eyes, the shell of its ears, the soft bed of its cheek. All of it draws me in like a lover lured by their mistress.

I look up at the setting sun. The sun withdraws its rays like a flower unfurling in reverse. Just to furl again, to herald the coming of a new and a fresh day.

The hues of golden, pink, and purple saturate the sky. I realize once I used to crave a glimpse of the sunset. The sky a capricious canvas. The color-shifting through it is like telling a different story with its every rise upon the infinite sky.

The sun vanishes with its incandescent rays. The darkness spreads its dark wings upon the world. And in a while, I notice the beauty it holds on its wings. The touch of the stars speckling the night sky acts like a balm for my ragged soul.

Like fog lifting from the front of my eyes. I have a revelation, and I twirl on my feet. The grayness and the bleakness of the world fade like ink bleeding into a paper. 

The world appears younger, like the days when the weight of my future was not beating down on me. It is me who has paused the song. The song still floated in the air with the same exquisiteness.

The night is not the end of a day but the beginning of another chapter. I can only see the stars and the moon at night. Things that seem blurry in the day look clearer at night.

I walk to the park and sit on a swing. The laughter of children is a song that makes my heart a little happier. The voice of their palpable joy permeates the air. I clear the gloom and breathe in the mirth.

The angle of my smile speaks of genuine happiness. Not of anxiousness, uncertainty, or other emotions that had overpowered me for the past year. But of contentment.

It is not like other emotions have ceased to exist and exit my system. They are ever present there. But in the deafening din of noises yelling of failure, fear, uncertainty, skepticism. I have sidetracked them a bit and choose to taste the more fleeting yet precious emotions.

The future is still there. The exam I have tomorrow is still there. But I realize my fussing and obsessing over it will improve nothing. I have studied hard and to the best of my abilities. Whatever tomorrow brings with it. I will face it whether I pass the exam or fail it.

No, not that I stop caring. I badly want to pass the exam and conquer one of my dreams.

I gaze at the twinkling sky with a content sigh and remember one of my sayings from the old times.

If one dream fails, dream another. After all, there are enough stars in the sky to grant me one more wish.