a willow by the river
from which no leaf has fallen nor
bitten by the sun
turned orange or crimson.
The leaves cling and grow paler,
swing and grow paler
over the swirling waters of the river.
--William Carlos Williams
There is this certain feeling of fading away, it isn’t quite sorrow or emptiness, it is merely. . . indifference. Apathy that you learn to hate with all your heart- or what you have left of it anyway.
Perhaps you would have preferred hatred, hatred is acknowledgement.
If nobody else saw you, how would you even believe you still existed? Day in and day out trying to blend in and stand out at the same time, all while asking one, simple question- one question so mindless and mundane that you do not even have the courage to answer it- Is this who I am?
Of course you would never expect him to understand- how could he with the perfect home and the perfect everything?
__________________________________________________________________________
She thinks that the sky fades into the night in some sort of defiance, to show that it doesn’t need to be bright and happy and fake all the time. And when she sees the darkness, to know that not even the sky can be constant or dependable, she is forced to seek solace in the twinkling of the stars, poor substitutes for daylight that they are.
And what will she do when they are gone? She wonders what will she do when the night is swathed with darkness and their merry twinkling no longer gives her comfort?
‘You will die,’ says a voice from somewhere behind her, watching her as she spins around to face him.
It is the first time she has seen him since the summer, and even though their last conversation had ended with doors being slammed and punctuated with the shattering of plates, a part of her thinks that she is glad to see him. ‘Ted- what makes you think that?’
‘You do.’
‘I will never die, Ted,’ she replies, with a bitter smile playing on her lips. ‘No matter how much you wish me to. You see, I, unlike you, have no desire to be a foolish hero. I, unlike you, wish to remain alive.’
He shakes his head slowly; all the time wishing that what she said was true, that she meant every word. But he sees it in her eyes; she doesn’t. ‘I have as much of a death wish as the next person.’
She looks at him and says softly, ‘Unfortunately, the next person is me.’
He looks into her eyes for a whole second, but what really seems like an eternity. Then she breaks his gaze and the moment is lost, she hadn’t expected to feel anything and she tries desperately to ignore those twinges of regret. ‘So be it then. Andromeda, neither of us has any desire to sacrifice anything. Even if you have nothing, the question is- are you willing to give it up?’
She can’t will herself to answer.
‘Look at me,’ he says softly, tilting her chin up. ‘Do you really think you can go on like this?’
‘No. Not for much longer at any rate.’
‘Then what are you going to do, Andromeda? What else can you do?’
She speaks quietly, almost inaudibly. ‘Ted, I am a Black. It‘s my name, my identity- almost entirely who I am. If I don’t have that, then what do I have?
We don’t live in a perfect world, not just as yet.’
‘Andromeda, what do you think you can do? What can you ever change?’
She answers him in one simple word, one simple phrase that changes her whole life.‘Everything.’
‘You wish for a different time, a different place and perhaps the world altogether would have been different. And foolishly you cling on to this desperate hope that it would stop spinning. Tell me, have you ever seen things working that way?
‘No, you very well know what everything means. Hope? False hope? When has that ever been any good?’
‘It’s not that!’ she screams, ‘Everything is tied in together, with a definite purpose. You think you can storm in here and tell me that I am wrong, tell me that I have been thinking the wrong thing for twenty years of my life. You can’t do that to me, I won’t let you.’
‘Then I won’t,’ he replies softly, ‘Andromeda, I…I still love you.’
‘How can you?’ she snaps. Her heart has been broken more than she would care to admit, and she doesn’t think that this one Muggle-born will make much of a difference. ‘How can you still love me after all those things I’ve said to you?’
‘Do you love me, Andromeda?’
‘Answering a question with a question.’ she smirked bitterly, ‘Ted, I would have expected that of a Black. But certainly not from a Mudblood.’
He flinches at the use of this degrading term, but refuses to pull his gaze away from her. ‘Andromeda, you do know you are going to fall, don’t you?’
She looks at him and slowly nods. She had never expected him, she had never expected anyone to understand that.
‘And you will fall, quite unnoticed and the world will just rush by. You may fall Andromeda, but who will fall with you?’
Sometimes she thinks that some things are better left unsaid.
‘Andromeda,’ he says gently. ‘Andromeda, it doesn’t have to be this way. You will never need to fall. Andromeda, please answer me- do you still love me?’
‘Ted…’
‘I would give you the world.’
‘Yes, but would you ever give it up for me?’
He looks at her for a whole second, taking in the full implication of her words. ‘I would.’
‘Then I would say yes as well.’
He looks at her and in that one moment his eyes are filled with some sort of wild fervour, a hidden spark relit for what she hoped was eternity. And in that one second she feels she can trust him, that she’ll believe whatever star he paints.
‘We’ll get married, you and I. It’ll be our own little adventure.’