What happens when a wind die? What remains? Your suave odour that I found lingering in the wind first, and around you later, whose scent I sensed in its entirety when you hugged me bone against bone, under the numb, lustrous full moon; Whose haunting beauty I paid for in the lonely weeks that followed. Is this what it feels like when the wind dies? Those damp, cloudy days were cursed; cursed were the streetlights slithering through half-closed leaves, casting ghostly shadows across the stark siloheutte of towering trees. What else could birth winter winds on a summer’s eve? The same wind that led you to sit beside me, rest your head on my shoulder, touch my hand—surely a wind died, or something within me. Had that wind not perished, we would sit across from each other now, and I would never think about those who sit across from me.
“No, I am alright,” I lied, “just a little colder, but that’s okay.” I could never have taken your shawl; how then would I cling to your lingering fragrance? What a pitiful existence, to roam endlessly in search of that same breeze, the only one that can soothe my restless nights.
What happened to you? Why are you tormet yourself that much? Was there just one person in the vast world meant for you? I curse my blame upon the wind, that wind has broken me. No, I do not blame myself, how could I have not felt her touch, how could I have not seen her in the moonlight and how could she not hug me on the darkest of the nights. I gracefully blame the wind without a shred of remorse or anger. No, it is not anger that stirs within me; it is the absence of that wind that I mourn.
I recall one story from the footnotes of an old newspaper in my childhood, one that spoke of the eerie stillness of baby mongooses when abandoned. When mistakenly abandoned by their mother or group, they don’t scurry into another burrow, they don’t emit desperate cries for help, nor do they wander in search of their lost family. Instead, they just stand. They become statues of despair, immobile and silent, gazing into the void with unhopeful eyes as they wait for fate to take its own course.
The morning after the last time I saw her mirrored the stillness of abandonded mongoose. I laid motionless staring at my ceiling for more than two hours, engulfed in a numbness so profound that the world around me seemed to dissolve into bleak grim shadow. There was nothing I wouldn’t give to feel that lost touch again, yet there was absolutely nothing I could do to reclaim it.
It was near dusk-to-evenfall when I began walking on this abandoned pathway, the warmth as palpable as moon-heated stones, as palpable as ground after hours of rain. No sweaters graced my shoulders, no layers shielded my skin; how could I when it was so warm drenched? But the trail was long behind me, too far to retreat for warmer attire, and as the sun dipped below the horizon, the winter winds began their assault. Now, in this biting chill, my lips ceased their murmured soliloquies, stilled by the cold, even talking to myself seemed like a hard task. Here I sit upon a frigid stone, gazing across a valley shrouded in withered clouds. What irony it would be, to smile now—in the face of a cold that seeks to freeze the soul, that petrifies poignant emotions into unyielding statues, in the face of my own blood rendered sluggish and cold, observing myself, contemplating a smile amidst the desolation.
I then knew, something that I’ve never known before, this is the aftermath when the wind dies. I now understand that baby mongoose, he was stilled not by choice but by the cessation of the wind that once pushed its spirit. And I now know with immense certainty why I had never asked for her shawl—because the wind had died in the shape of her void that I saw in the days to come. And I know what happens to those birds who stopped signing and I know how many people it takes to break yourself. I know this but I’ll keep this to myself. Oh, what a day! In the cries of the dying wind. I find myself yearning, paradoxically, for the wind to perish with the night, but I might die into the stillness along the silent closure of its last breath. And I think that’s the risk I have to take to live.