TheFog

It happened today evening while having a meal in a restaurant. The air in the narrow cramped street just outside were being fogged with insecticides to keep the mosquitoes at a check.

It was a reminder to the evening i saw you last, clearly and without illusions.

Do you remember standing at the crossroads, on the evening before the day you were made to leave from the institute. The road ahead from the crossroad went up to your place, your room. You were turned away from me, holding your mobile phone in your hand while on your bike.

Having come at the gates of the ground, after working out for an hour or so, having searched for you on the ground, I saw you at the end of the street, at the crossroads. Someone I knew tried to hook me into a conversation, but i left them and started running towards you.

Just then the vehicle with the fogging machine on its back, turned on this street. It was fanning out the biting smelly fog that supposedly kills mosquitoes and other insects. I wish I had not worried about getting the smoke into my lungs, and kept on running harder and harder. But I couldn’t. The smoke got in and slowed me down.

I took off my eyes off you for a moment and this is when you were stolen from me. Just when I was about to reach the end of the street, I saw that you were not there. You had gone on, leaving the fog behind. And I just couldn’t tell where. I couldn’t make out where you were.

Assuming you were returning to your room, I ran on the street in the direction, hopefully to chase you down and stop you, before you crossed the gates. This is the first time i was chasing someone.

Almost reaching the gates, i saw your friend(?) on their bike coming towards me. Feeling that they knew what was up, you being close to them, i looked at them, without speaking, with the hope that they will lead me to you. But their face told me something else. And I realised that not only i was not going to get any help from them, and that probably i had misunderstood everything, making me feel a little like a [| _____]. Nothing. You were gone.

So much has changed since. And yet there has been this fog of illusion between us, that since prevented me from seeing you without the filters, without the projections, without the illusions. I want to see you. Please. As you are. And for you to see me as i am. Without images. Without illusions. Without past and future.