This was a New Year about a year ago... the auspicious beginning of our relationship taking some steps forward.
I hadn't bought my own mobile phone yet. Just as midnight was about to strike, just two seconds before, some little message came slipping through, piercing all the silence that shrouded the night!
Something in me began to stir, my blood growing warmer...I understood at once...all my thoughts had but one demand...I had to see that message right now, whatever it took! I had no means, so even after desire awakened, my chataki-bird consciousness kept turning away! Like some civilized coating of forbidden propriety!!
What was in that message? Surely some lines of poetry? No no...some deep emotion-laden longing...or New Year's greetings in some long tale! Well, it could also be some lengthy innocent rambling about yesterday's math mistake...surely they were sitting there with phone in hand, waiting unblinking for my reply! Ugh! I can't bear it anymore! Listen, in fairy tales so many fairies come, so many grandmothers, doing so much magic to set everything right...won't someone come for me too! I want it so much...some grandmother to come and let me touch, just a little, the love they've sent me!...let me...what harm would it do...!!
The whole night passed in restless turning. I couldn't sleep until I'd touched those clusters of feeling bound in fragments of words...!
As the first day of the year, there was a great commotion of distributing new books everywhere, but however much we tried, we two couldn't find a way to come close and talk! Around eleven, when it was time for light refreshments, just as I was passing by I heard their voice...hey, wait a moment!
Such small words, just two...yet as if adorned with immortal, ageless, imperishable lines of a hundred verses!
Five minutes, twenty minutes...thirty passed too...time moving forward bit by bit, only I remained behind, waiting to hear footsteps..! This way two hundred sixty minutes went by. I kept standing by the window near the boundary wall, gazing toward them, they were in some meeting. Sometimes they'd look at me with pitying eyes, then return to the meeting. I was terribly angry that day! I came home with face puffed up in rage, couldn't hold back tears no matter what! Such pointless foolish crying, wasn't it!
They say when you love, even in a stone's hard breast a child's heart awakens, so I've heard.
They returned home with wounded heart and sent me a message, but I never got to see it. They thought I was terribly angry with them. I was actually angry with the meeting people! Hee hee hee...who would tell them that! Why would I tell them! Let it be, let them value my waiting a little!!
The next day, before and after going to class, how many times they called me in that gentle voice, thinking of it even now spreads a kind of enchantment in my mind. I had a note to show them, but instead of going myself, I sent it through someone else. Then what a muffled cry of anguish fell from their eyes...if I were to write it, even words would rise in resentment against me!!
They sent word: 'Go, tell her to come.' Finally, my heart couldn't bear it anymore. As soon as I stood at the door, they said to me, 'Look, my hands have gone cold, goosebumps are rising on my body, how could you even do this...!'
That face bound me in such tenderness that day! Trust, faith, shelter—I found it all, my eternal happiness's canopy was right there in those eyes, I understood in that blessed moment!
Pouting, I said, 'You kept me standing there for so long, so I decided I won't talk to you anymore!'
Hearing this, they said in a tearful voice, 'On our first New Year I wanted to have you to myself a little, I was waiting hoping to receive some time with your love, to bind your hands in embrace and exchange some words in your-my city, that's what I was thinking. Well, forget it, what's the use of saying more, you don't want to listen anyway, you don't want to talk to me at all! So this is how our first New Year began!?'
In the storm of my beloved's wounded pride, mixed with love and tenderness, I couldn't grasp even a straw! With heavy heart, holding their hands tucked away in an ocean of shyness, I said, 'When the new year has started with a quarrel, you'll see, every single day I'll have a little spat with you! I'll do it properly...making me stand there waiting, no...!'
At my such boldness, they pulled my chin gently and dissolved in laughter. With satisfied breath of trust, faith and tenderness, the new year of our love had begun.
Look, how many New Years have come empty-handed since, sighing and sighing, trampling dry leaves, going away alone...! Today it seems New Year doesn't come to my life anymore. You were my most novel discovery, my most original ruby, the most different someone, whom I perhaps wanted in some unknown earning. When someone from within me says sometimes, I have lost you, then I feel terribly helpless, afraid...so very afraid... yes, even today!
I never feared solitude; you know, I don't fear it even now, calls come constantly from within...I haven't lost you, I cannot lose you! You are right there, in my blood's warm current, in all my madness-mixed longings, in all my rebellious logic, in every year's beginning, on my sandy shores, in every heated word of mine...!
You know, I found someone else one day! They too were just as novel, just as original, just as simple. Only in one place you and they were different. Where, you know? In novelty, the two of you are completely distinct!! That person is entirely different, just as you are not in them, your shadow is not in you either, which I've always wanted. They have a very large heart, so much love. They know how to love deeply, and also know how to step aside in silent love!
I don't want to explain them to you; just as I didn't explain you, I won't explain them either. I do so love to keep the hidden beauties of my love to myself! Only to me are these priceless, no one else could guard them, they might just become such beautiful gray! Can one bear that much, tell me!
But you know, I couldn't give them love in their own way, my love simply lacks the strength! So I think I've lost them too! Alas, all my love is truly pale! Yes, against their love everything of mine seemed so very pale! I don't have that nectar-pot to give love, perhaps it all dissolved in time's womb, or maybe it never existed! I'm not the kind of girl who can be loved like that, I believe this now. I am a completely failed person through and through!
O my dear love, I've arranged you with such care, you might as well stay there in some closed attic, lying quietly in an unread letter's envelope! In some parting moment, at some odd hour, perhaps someone will touch you too...! In that heart-churning arrangement, let me not remain!