Dreams of snow globes

Dreams of snow globes - short story. Once again in the life story of Allegra and Mark.

Mark sat gingerly at the edge of her bed, using his fingers to gently stroke her fingertips. She seemed peaceful, almost smiling in her sleep like an angel who would never wake up. The monitors strapped to her body bleeped from time to time, according to her vital signs. Everyone was praying for her. Would she wake up? Mark wondered. He had already lost his father. He had always wanted to start a family when he was young so that his children would not be fatherless. He touched her hair gently. Wake up, he whispered.

I love those snow-globes. Even though I never bought one, in the places of my travels, I would go into the gift shops and peer into the intricately designed cityscape inside the globe, and shake it. The tiny city would be covered with snow, or with little happy glitter specks. I love those globes the way I love hand written long love letters. It seems that we have become so technologically advanced that we have forgotten about what it feels like to read someone’s handwriting.

Walking barefooted on the sand with Mark. Wandering through meandering roads that lead to nowhere. Remembering the way he crinkled up his eyes in a warm smile when he saw me appearing.

With each shake, it reminds me about how fragile love is, one swipe of the hand can lead the city into a magical place of pure, clean, snow and glitter, or by not choosing to do anything, the city stays as it is, untouched, but sterile, and perhaps hostile.

Where are you now, Mark? I do not dare to let my mind return to the place where we once wandered happily. Fearing it would be more bittersweet than happy memories, now. Do you know that I think of you everyday? Yet I don’t seem to hear your voice, Mark. I don’t seem to see myself in your eyes. Where my soul is in, I don’t know. Perhaps it has turned deaf, and blind. I think I am dying. I can hear the sound of my heart, and it tells me it may not last the distance. Have you experienced the pain that comes from waking up one day and reading the headlines, and knowing that for sure, there is a sinking feeling in your heart – an omen that means that life as you knew it would never be the same? When I saw those planes flying into the landmark buildings in a country far away from me, somehow, I knew. I love planes, watching them takeoff. I love the feeling of flying in my dreams. I knew it was a sign, an omen. My best friend told me so, too. The beginning of an end, he said. I spiraled into a depression that even you knew nothing about. The emptiness ate me up, even when you were by my side. Even when I was with people whom I knew and loved. Only when I was travelling, on a jet plane, to a foreign land, then did it seem I was leaving it all behind. That was why I always travelled. To the same place. Almost every fortnight to a place I knew I could find peace. I had always left all my tears behind at the border passing. It seemed that each tear I cried made me weaker and helped the darkness to consume me further. I vowed not to cry. But tears consumed me daily.

Days spent in the national library, poring over Austen classics and reading aloud poems by Wilde and Pablo. Endless sunsets on benches and evenings whispering about how we loved each other. Those were my best memories about the times we shared.

I wanted to escape from the darkness haunting my mind. I left you, again and again. Reasons. Excuses. I was involved in my career advancement. I was involved with someone else. I was too busy. I was cooking up excuses to cover up the essence of my heart, that it was consumed with a grief that was bottomless.

She saw a bright light, and murmurings in the background. She stirred, and opened her eyes. She beheld her beloved’s face in front of her. And his eyes, filling up with tears, dripping soundlessly below, the kind of love that does not need words.

I’m back, Mark, she whispered in her heart. I’m back.