Drown With Your Anchors

The window opened with a faint screech of metal against metal that slowly died in the whir of the ceiling fan. She looked behind her one last time and then climbed on the window ledge, rather carelessly; a cigarette glowing at one end held between two fingers and a tea cup balanced on the palm of the other hand. She let her legs hang down the ledge, swaying.

From the ground the figure propped on the window sill of the twelfth floor looked like nothing but an irregular play of the shadows under the dark sky. Closer and you could make out the silhouette of a person, the orange glow at one end of the cigarette, nothing more than a tiny flaming speck moving back and forth in midair.

Her hand moves rhythmically between her lips and the saucer underneath the slender tea cup that doubles as an ash tray. Each puff of smoke that escapes gently from between her lips is like a mere illusion in the dark night, conjured up from thin air.

However she is too occupied to pay any heed to either the magic the smoke presents or the faint moonlight that keeps casting interesting shadows around her. Tears swim before her reddened eyes, almost brimming over but not quite yet. Whether they were due to the sting of the cigarette smoke that she has not yet been accustomed to or the great lump blocking her airway, she didn’t knew. But her throat was blocked; the air wheezing in and out rather painfully. She clenched her teeth against an overwhelming sensation of tears threatening to flow.

In an attempt to distract her own self she looks back into the dark room packed with boxes and shuts the window; her ears ringing at the faint screech. Nothing is visible through the dirty window and the voice that she would soon be hearing is now blocked out.

She lets the tears flow, letting her unwelcome sorrows to mingle with the stuffy air. The air presses down, heavy with the depression that leaks from her. It’s like extreme humidity; it makes breathing and moving difficult as if walking through water or something thicker that fills the earth like a swimming pool. It draws out her energy and will, weighing her down and pushing her away, slowly letting her drown with the anchor that held her.
                                                                   

             ***

From the fifth floor of the opposite building a girl has come out for fresh air; the phone pressed to her ear and a smile tickling her lips. She smiles tenderly at what she hears through the phone but midway through it she suddenly looks up at the sound of a half scream. She forgets to smile or to reply, she doesn’t hears a thing as her eyes follow a shadowy figure falling from the sky.

-Momina.