Like everyday, sitting in the backseat of the rented car, he tried one last time to embrace her within his arms. He did it everyday. He found solace in it. A kind of satisfaction, which the strongest whiskey failed to provide him, which even the biggest joint barred him of.
Feeling her perfumed hair with his hands, slowly, but carefully entangling her messed up curls, he smiled. Perhaps, the very first smile since the start of his day.
“Maaiya” left. She only cared for the megre amount of money which she unwillingly had to pay, to sustain her only son. Him. A son? Or..a responsibility? A burden? Financial support. She failed to indulge herself into the emotional one!
But, a mother is a mother, no matter what.
She was happy. What if with someone else? She was happy. That was what mattered.
Feeling her hands on his overgrown moustache, he calmed himself down. With every stroke that her fingers made on his scalp, his heartbeats began to regain it’s normal pace.
Her red nail paint. That was what he loved. Her tiny fingers moving down to his chest, slowly fitting above his heart, between his lungs.
The lungs. It was burning too. It grew flowers now, so beautiful that it made it difficult for him to breath. Why didn’t he listen to her before when her voice cracked, forbidding him to smoke?
“Addiction”.
That is what rips you apart at the end. Yes, addiction. She too was an addiction. A painkiller. An amalgamation of bittersweet glass pieces, that seems beautiful but, shreds you steadily.
But what happened today? Why did she deny his arms? His embrace? Was the rented car too expensive for her?
He picked up her hand and placed it on his chest.
It no longer comforted him. Her nails seemed like the claws of a raven.
Where was the painkiller?
Was it gone?
Erased? Forever?
Never to come back again??
