Time | #FictionMonday

This Flash Fiction was written for #FictionMonday, a blog hop hosted by Vinitha Dileep on her blog, ‘Reflections‘ based on the word prompt ‘Time’.

Time

Time expands, then contracts, all in tune with the stirrings of the heart.

—Haruki Murakami

It’s 05:00 am. Tanya wakes up at her usual time. As is now her habit, she turns to look at Dave’s smiling face, frozen in that last snapshot she’d taken of him.

Dave’s presence in her life is still as palpable—the shirt still hangs on the door; the watch sits quietly on the bedside table and the laptop waits patiently, in the study. Perhaps, it’s the smell of him in everything—almost as if it points out to a real person in real-time, who has just left home for a while and will be back soon.

Except, that Tanya knows he is not coming back. There is a terrible finality to that thought that scrapes her soul off the last ounce of hope.

This morning, something strange happened to Tanya. For the first time in two years, she has not written in her journal—the one which she has been keeping, since Dave’s passing.

“Why does it feel as if things are beginning to lift?” —she wonders. Not willing to bear the weight of her loss anymore, she longs to embrace this feeling of transition, even if is transitory. In a split second, her nagging sense of guilt creeps in, reminding her of something. She turns to face Dave’s picture and questions him as if to ask—

“Must I keep blowing air into your spirit all the time?…. Is that the only way to keep you alive in my thoughts?” 

Torn between mourning his loss and reclaiming her life back, Tanya mulls over that one choice she has—a bridge across time—a bridge that will keep Dave’s memories safe within her heart, while she moves on, letting go of the numbing pain she’s been holding within herself for so long.

Will she make it?

As always, time alone has the answers.

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