Union

He sits down with his laptop screen illuminating his face, cutting through the dimly lit room. She lies down next to him, facing the wall - "Where are you stuck, Mr.Hemingway?" She mocks without looking at him. "You aren't asleep yet?" He wonders aloud. "Not with your ambient lighting cutting through my sleep" she tries to sound intelligent. 

"I want to write a story" he says. "But my writer's block isn't budging anywhere tonight" He adds. "Reckon I could think up some interesting story to relate to you?" - "Throw in your ideas - I always win when you chime in" he says playfully. 

"Write about us" she says - "with a twist" - "Put us in a different plane - a situation other than where we are right now and imagine a story around it. What if we hadn't met as teens? what if we had met as kids and parted ways only to realize our love much later? What if we weren't this happily ever after?"

"Put us in a car, on a long drive - like soulmates that hadn't tied the knot. Like friends that hadn't met in college. You and I, meeting after a hiatus of eons, connecting like twin flames, sitting beside each other, holding hands, not breathing a word but somehow communicating volumes just with that chaste skin contact, You and I, on different continents, momentarily crossing paths, sharing a ride, weaving through a web of traffic, looking for an exit that doesn't show itself - you and I, sneaking away from the worlds we come from, desperate to know where our road is leading us to. Only to realize we do not have a destination to drive to. You and I, trying to enjoy the journey, the journey devoid of a definite stop - attempting all we can to hold each other's hands a little longer, and letting that silence pour out the vulnerabilities that are carefully wrapped away from the sight of the judging world. Us, looking through the windshield of the world and seeing it alike. Us, being in the same page of perception, harmonious in what we seek out of our escape. Our fingers entwined together like dark chocolate and caramel, creating a delicious and enticing contrast of hues - just like our thoughts entwine in all their diversity but the spirits merge in the oneness of an identical core. You and I, not like a wife and husband - heck, not even like a woman and a man but two bodies of energy that resonate and fuse together in a divine bond. You and I, like fluid love, flowing through the many creases of our hearts and cleansing those voids with the waters of compassion. Make us trap in a traffic jam actually - one of those really stuck up jams that neither let us  go forward nor backward - Let the dusk darken around us while the light of our love shines through the twilight. Let us be there, in that moment, without a care to get back home on time, without an agenda to impress each other, without the yearning to experience something beyond that very moment of togetherness - like co passengers, streaming through this web called life, not saying a word, not caring for where the path is leading us to but just in the comfort of that company, let you and me live a moment that is worth a hundred lifetimes"

"Sigh" He gasps - 'You make that sound like an epiphany" 

"I know" she quips - "I know" - "As long as you put us together, even if it is just one  long drive on a lone evening of our lives, it should be good enough. That solo moment should do"

"Go to bed, he ruffles her hair and whispers" - "Yeah right" She mocks - "Now that the ambient sound of your keyboard clicking unifies with the ambient light of your laptop screen, I should be well lulled into my dreamland"

They both smile. To themselves, thinking about the joy the other brings to them.

Picture courtesy - my friend the Amateur clicker, Dhiren Shah.