When the morning rays touched her insomniac eyes, she was still awake. At a corner of her bed, she lay with the right hand on her forehead and a pillow squeezed between her left hand and her heaving breasts.
Sunlight floated into the room through the window which she had mistakenly left open last night. Disturbed at this intrusion, she turned to her right facing the wall, which had a painting of a wrecked ship amidst the raging sea.
She tried to shut herself out from the zillions of rays which had invaded her room and were now slowly taking the room hostage. She squeezed the pillow more closely to her chest as a tear drop trickled out of her eyes. She took a deep long breath, her eyes still fixed on something on the white wall.
Long deep breath, she thought, was the only cure of a heart ridden with guilt and helplessness.
"I deserve these," she told herself, as another tear ball was starting to form.
"A loser, a failure, a worthless creature."
"How many times I have to be disappointed, how many times I have to try, how many days I have to live life like a piece of shit, how many times, how many times ..."
"I shouldn't have been born..."
"I shouldn't have been born..."
Her head grew heavy and started spinning, everything was blurring in front of her eyes as she started to feel breathless once again. She was feeling suffocated as if someone had wriggled her neck from behind. Small dots of perspiration started gathering on her forehead and she started to get restless.
She wanted to get down from her bed and head straight to the shower under which she has spent most of her lonely hours for the last four years. But when she turned around to face the open window, she realized that the weather had suddenly changed and it wasn't bright outside anymore. Rather, the light had dipped and it was now gloomy outside. Dark clouds had gathered from nowhere and had littered the blue sky.
It was as if someone had smeared ashes over the bright face of the sky and it seemed to her there was an uncanny similarly between the laden sky and her heavy heart.
She got down from the bed and hobbled her way to the balcony, snaking through the scattered rubble of articles that lay on the floor.
It was drizzling now as she stood at the threshold with her head against the doorway. Even the dipped morning light drew her eyes shut and she had to peer painfully to see the droplets which were now making musical notes mixing with the gusting wind that brushed her hair over her face.
The rain drops were making wet marks on the dry walls of her room, each a new diagram having a different shape and size. She flicked her eyes in between to ease the burning sensation as the rain gathered speed.
She took a step towards the parapet and stood there drenching in the morning rain with her hands carelessly holding the railing. The rain ran down her unruffled hair, kissed her skin, before oozing to the floor as she closed her eyes to soak in the feeling completely.
Just across the road that faced the house, there was a wet blue kite hanging on the tiny twig of the mango tree that now swung by the heavy breeze noisily but in rhythm to the musical pattern created by the pattering rain.
