The Wedding Card

His loneliness is twenty four years, seven months and nineteen days old. It crept in the moment when he received her wedding card one night prior to her wedding which carried a note in her beautiful handwriting saying, ‘Forget me’.

He lived in her neighborhood, having first met her in his childhood when she broke his nose with her racquet, having first known her in his adolescence when both passed furtive glances at each other from the edge of their balconies, having first loved her in his adulthood when she stood by him like a pillar as he lost his parent in an auto crash, and having first longed for her in his lonely night that followed after the wedding card reached his hands. He couldn’t convince her parents to allow their daughter to marry him, a struggling orphaned writer. The sounds of trumpets on her wedding night hasn’t escaped his memory till date, still waking him up in the middle of the night. Her dry cheeks that bore the scars of the tears of the previous night, perhaps while slowly penning down those two words, still remain imprinted in his memory as if it was yesterday. He kept gazing at her in search of silent tears from his neighboring balcony, when her handsome husband escorted her to the flower laden car outside her house, making her disappear even before she could remember to look back, just once. How could she ask him to forget her? Would she be able to forget him, ever? Has she forgotten him? How could it be so easy for her, when it isn’t easy at all for him? The question accompany him like a loyal pet in those long, tiring, lonely years that followed. He left his old house, hoping new place would let him get rid of his old memories, but you know memories can’t be tamed, they just get fainter with time, which is what happened.

Today after so many years, there is something that have wiped the faint layers of dust from those memories. The postman after years of service, has finally got the chance to knock on the always shut door of one of the nation’s celebrated writers. The door opens, an irate old man with dried but stained cheeks of the previous night greets him unconcerned. The postman, frightened, hands him an envelope and whisks off, before the writer could say anything. It is for the first time in his lonely life that he sees his name in a familiar handwriting. His wrinkled forehead’s line tighten as he opens the envelope, careful not to tear it, so that he could preserve it forever, along with that twenty four years, seven months and nineteen days old wedding card. He’s intrigued. It’s another wedding card; her daughter’s wedding card. There is once again a note inside it, this time with another two words: ‘forgive me’. 

He doesn’t realize the reason for the apology until he reads through the wedding card again and again, until a smile cracks up on his tired face. It wasn’t just the wedding card for her daughter, but also his.

Peace.