The last journey

Upon taking a breather to cease the dejection that I retained which could potentially drive me further into a higher level of sadness, I made an attempt to utilize my sight as a tool to divert my attention away in order to compose myself and be additionally stern with my emotion. I refused to weep. 

Looking up, there was no hint of blue, just different shades of grey. It looked like the painter running out of different colours and irrationally baffled by which grey to brush on, thus coming out with at least three would satisfy his bewilderment. 

As if the skies knew the clouds were grieving. By revealing some of its hues, the skies knew that it would disregard the heaviness that the clouds were possessing; therefore, accordingly, the skies gratified what it had to do by staying hidden and let the gloom from the clouds to be vented out unhurriedly. 

All pair of eyes; dampened and concealing the indescribable intense sorrows was on the wooden compartment covered with green fabric painted with the calligraphy of the Almighty’s holy words. The soulless body was finally being escorted out of the mosque and transported into the van. That was, and will always, be the part which unfathomably the hardest for me—the deceased was finally on his last journey to his next home; the grave. 

And that’s when I didn’t even try to halt my tears. I just cried my eyes out.

A paper plane that made a grumpy man happy

The imperfect lines and curves of the letters he produced on the paper shook the desire in him up to keep his intention alive. It would be hard for anyone to read it on a first try, he had to admit. “Well, as long as the meaning is there,” he whispered calmly as if the inanimate objects in the room would agree to offer some cheers. 

He felt like his 5-year-old self who was always fond of the process of folding papers to create out some remarkable paper planes. He felt old as he could not remember which folds would result in a good fly, so he came out with the simplest and threw it out of the rusty window after giving it a powerful blow with the air from his mouth. 

Tailing it with his eyes, cheerfully it flew according to the wind direction. It brought his burden away, he felt easy. Few seconds his eyes were on something else, the next time he knew the plane was already on the ground. It appeared that it had hit someone—a nameless but a familiar face. It would not work if he would just leave the window as the man, the ‘grumpy man’ as the neighbours dubbed him, has already assured about the owner of the plane. Their eyes had interlocked for a brief second. 

He was nervous and totally was not ready to provide a solid defence in case the man would turn up to him and proves him the name he was labelled. Nonetheless, it was not fair to his judgement, because he never really get to acknowledge the rumours he heard of the man. The man seemed like a big guy with baggy wise stories to tell. 

He gulped as the man seen to unfold the paper after picking it up with a struggled motion to balance his body. The man’s legs were strong, he thought. It took him a virtual slap in his mind to validate the scene—the man waved at him and shouted, “I need this. I really need this, a lot. Thank you!” 

Fascinated by the event, he only managed to lift a little bit of the cap on his head as an alternative way to express an acceptance. He could not utter a single word. Unable to sway his eyes away, he kept looking at the man until even his shadow was nowhere to be spotted. He proceeded to take a comfortable seat on his favourite chair, let out a big sigh and acknowledged, for the millionth of times, the truth he wrote on the paper, “Really, nobody said it was easy.”