BURNT OUT NOONS

This is the end, beautiful friend.
It hurts to set you free.
But you'll never follow me.
The end of laughter and soft lies,
The end of nights we tried to die,
This...is the end.
--Jim Morrison

Jewelry never meant much. It was easier to get away without wearing them, even if Maa was always behind your back telling you to wear something.
So she started stashing them away in the pretty boxes meant for storing jewelry that filled her drawers. The boxes came in all shapes and sizes and colours and were all pretty. Like women. She was sure no woman needed them as much as she did, because for her they did their job best- store.
Pushing shut boxes, and opening them, to while away the afternoon, a particular silver caught her eye.

He had reached out-- half reached out after saying, "Can I see what you're wearing?"
She wasn't sure whether she was supposed to lean across the table and let him have a proper look at the pendant or remove it from her neck for him to see. In her confusion, she lifted it off her chest and placed it on his fingers. He held it for a brief moment.
"Is it a flame?"
I think it's a teardop. He let it fall back where it was.

She held it in her fingers now. It was a flame. Not a teardrop. All the time she had worn that piece before, she had thought she was wearing a teardrop. From now on, what she wore was going to be a flame. She had worn a flame all her life and not known what it was, until he pronounced it for her. A definition had changed.

She floated into an afternoon, not too long ago. She had walked beside him through crowded streets, wanting to reach out for his hand, when it felt like she would lose him to the crowd. What she had not known was that he too had wanted to reach out and hold hers, when they walked through the streets that afternoon.