The bright afternoon sky faded with alacrity giving way to the evening...an evening so perfect that she might have thoroughly enjoyed it...under other circumstances....some other time. It felt like ages ago when her face would light up at the sight of the canvas of heaven strewn with colours, as it shifted and churned out shade after shade of mesmeric hues; as if constantly being worked upon by a divine painter.

But....It was all long ago.....long before she lost her heart and ended up finding it broken in pieces, lying listless in a drain. Try as she might she hadn't been able to fix it....mend it.....her painstaking efforts to put it back together with utmost care, culminating in a heart rending tragedy as painful gusts of nostalgic memories made it crumble back into pieces. A sigh escaped her lips...an almost silent one, but in this grove of trees it echoed with deafening magnitude carried along and amplified a thousand times by the breeze. Autumn had played its part and the almost bare tree branches rustled.....an elegy so true in its soul that it shot straight through her heart. She looked at the trees as they cried.....in vain.....at the loss of their love!

At the horizon, the sun was slowly sinking away......the skies again metamorphosing into a masterpiece. She looked up and the glow of the setting orb glanced of her beautiful face.....the last mellow beams playing through her lovely curls. She could feel the warmth of life spreading through her.....but failing to thaw her heart out......a heart, which had turned colder....harder than stone. She fished out her diary and a pen from her satchel.....constant companions along this solitary journey of hers.....self-imposed but exceedingly necessary. Her hands moving in graceful strokes as she etched word after word....flowing straight from her frosty.....bitter heart....as if her soul squeezed her pain and liquefied it causing it to course out of her in a fine stream and morph into words. Words.....so magnificent.....painfully true....heart touching.....just as her life! Words.....lines....sentences spewed forth in a gushing torrent....as they always did....as if the storm drains had been opened in a thunderstorm!

Just as she finished penning down her last thought....her pain ebbing away into a dull throb.....the last few victims of the autumn's wrath cascaded down on her. As if the trees too had something to say...a tale to tell...of hurt...of longing. She picked up a threadbare leaf from near her feet and caressed it....how it resembled her heart in many ways....every dry vein had a unique pain hidden inside...and as her fingers moved over them, she felt her heart shrink...shrug away as if to an unknown touch. A dam broke somewhere and tears brimmed in her eyes....every salty drop a vivid testimony to what she had gone through....of how despite her relentless efforts, the hurt refused to die....of how life played games with her....of how she wanted to live and be dead at the same time.

Her tears fell on the dead leaf.....dead but holding signs of what it had gone through in its life. She clutched it to her bosom and wept. The graveyard of once green leaves surrounding her.....a piercing reminder....a token of how cruel life could be! And she wept some more till her eyes dried and there were no more tears left.

Silent...forcing herself to get up...she walked on uncertain legs....over crushed corpses of dry leaves....and left autumn's killing grounds. Back to the real Colosseum where a similar game was played but with living breathing people...where the floor was littered with sharp jagged pieces....of shattered dreams....hopes and blood soaked hearts! She made her way...a princess of arcane lands...her imagination ruling a kingdom where words bowed to do her bidding.....and where she hoped she would never get hurt again!

Images: Courtesy - deviantart.com

PS: CrossPosted at The Unexplored Side of Me