Key To Their Hearts

82- One

Poetry by my best friend GurnoorBedi

Started Typing On – 01/05/2020 (9:11 a.m.)

Chapter 82- One

It feels amazing. To bury the letter—letter he wrote to expressive whatever he's endured—inside the hole he's made. Siya watches as he folds it—so perfectly with no ugly bends on the side—and gently places it in the hands of Mother Nature.

Her tears win out. Her hand holds the phone with the torch on but it shakes. Not in cold but in sorrow. It was just a letter, she tells herself. But it felt more than that. His shoulder-blades were rigid and tight. His eyes misty. Rohan has tried so hard to lose this piteous feeling eating him inside.

He never revealed how much he blames himself for whatever happened with Khushi or Siya to anyone. It was a secret he kept. He keeps. He wears a mask under the daylight for it to return in the night like a bad and unendurable stab in his head.

Now, burying it feels like the weight—the aching and bitter knots were being undone—is being lifted off not only his chest or shoulders but his legs. Legs that kept him steady but also wobble in regret. Head that seems to throb like someone's is pushing it inside his neck and stomach.

"I let you both down." Pain blossoms on his chest and her eyes. Siya moves closer to him—his back facing her—with unsteady feet crushing the twigs underneath her. Trembling hands touch his stiff shoulders and squeeze, slowly move forward and backwards and press. Tears win out of him and in a disturbing high-pitch voice he sobs it all out.

This is the most emotional she's seen him. Her unspoken tears were nothing in comparison. Her hand is as hard as iron but he doesn't feel the burn. His body is too busy mourning over the past memories. "Roh—Rohan." She begs for him to be stronger.

This is not the Rohan she's met nearly over a year. He's not the Rohan she married. He's not the Rohan she recalls crying in the hospital when he met her. Yes, his eyes were red signalling towards a long crying session he must have had with intense fury that had turned his eyes black and lifeless after she woke up in the hospital bed.

He had sent her a debilitated smile—so hard to even look at—and eyes teary but mouth managed to whisper, "How are you, Joshi?" Without once flinching, or looking ashamed to be in the same room as her—with a victim—and no hint of loathe.

No hint of this much suffering.

Because she—Siya was breaking him Rohan right now after the incident. He promised himself to not break. Because she was broken. And a broken vase can't hold a beautiful rose in it's wall.

"S—stop it." She pleads resting her head on his shoulder. Her tears are starting to soak his black jacket. "It's n—not your fault. She doesn't blame you. I don't blame you."

He's on his knees. His jeans were perhaps covered in muddy now. His fist slaps the ground as if to crack it open and bury—dump—all his trauma away. "But I was—was supposed to be a g—good friend." He laments visually remembering every little detail. "I—I thought i—I'd lose you too, Siya. But in a wor—worse possible way."

His hands are muddy with soil in the middle of his fingers, despite that Rohan covers his face. Siya touches his hair and runs her hand down. Oozing the sobs away. Slowly. "I'm here. I'm here. I'm fine."

It takes so much begging from Siya for Rohan to compose himself and registers it's past mid-night. The water—the lake—was in constant ambient motion unaware—or ignorant—to the couple in front of him. He brings himself up from the help of his wife and struggles to step forward.