Time is the worst enemy of humanity. Because when it passes; you feel nothing!

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Time...

What a fierce thing it is. The thing which doesn't care about anybody. Doesn't stop for anybody, but maybe just maybe it has stopped now.

It has stopped every little thing at this moment. The moments which has changed everything.

This guy who has a polaroid on his hands looking at me with those vulnerabilities is the same whom I have seen in my dreams. He was the one whom I remembering calling my name over and over again after a running car.

who looks at me in the sleepless nights, who whispers to me in my dreams, but it still looks like a fainted spot in the dark.

" I still couldn't get over the fact that you didn't recognize me, " he whispered.

And at that moment I realized how loneliness can hurt someone till the end. There was pain in his eyes just simple pain. The pain of not remembering him; the pain of not recognizing everything at the starting point.

And I know I had hurt him in the millionth of ways. There was no comparison between his actions and my ignorance because some things can't be compared; some things can't be seen. What they only needed is to be felt. And I felt it alright what I have done in these past months.

And the irony is that I can't even think with a clear mind about what I've done. My thinking has not changed itself from the blurry images of my childhood, but still, I can hear the voice in my head; calling my name over and over again.

There were no words to say because our eyes were speaking for us. Still, when he reached with his soft padded palms onto my cheeks in a process of caressing them.

There was a long pregnant pause between us. Not because we were doing it wrong. Because we have been waiting for this moment in the corners of our hearts for a long time and when it is happening it is hard to believe.

Have you ever heard that saying-

We wait for all the years for something extraordinary to happen to us but when it does? There was no reaction left to feel it.

He caresses my cheek for a very long moment, my eyes went closed. His hot breath was fanning over my left cheek. Maybe he came near to me.

His soft yet cold fingertips touched my ears and I know it shame full to express that they must be burning with the heat.

I know I'm exasperating everything. This is nothing in front of a kiss that we have shared in the past.

But this moment, this heat, his presence and most importantly this silence has made me insane.

I'm not able to express what I'm feeling, or maybe I'm but I am lost.

"There was a time when we were so much close almost irreplaceable."

His hot breath fanning over me making me weak all over on my knees.

It was like a dream.

A dream where we have all the things. A dream of all those thousand minutes which I have spent hallucinating those blurry scenarios in my head.

"That night when your mother took you with her; I wanted to stop it but who would listen to the crying of a six-year-old boy? Who would listen to his thoughts? Who would care for his heart? I know it may sound childish but that was what it was. I'm not going to lie but I might have forgotten you... I might have not remembered anything about you. However, your father was the one who always remains on my side who didn't let me wipe your memories from us.
When your mother took you with her away from Florida; I thought that I will never see you ever again in my life but things happen and time changed.."

I looked outside the window, but I wasn't able to find any rearview or roads. No nothing. What I was seeing was a faint blurry scenery playing ahead of me. I was running with a doll in my hand; I was running towards him. He has chocolatey brown eyes, and whenever you see them you can see an inseparable pain. His brown flocks of hair were covering his chiselled face as he moved his left leg on the ladder, but his head was rose to the sky, as he held out his hand to me; never losing the connection between him and the sky.

"what if I fell?" I clutched my dolly light in my hands, unable to think anything because of fear.

That boy didn't say anything for a moment. he just looked into the blue eyes. As he was bound to say something, but then again his chiselled face became clear, "do you trust me?"

It was a simple question to ask. It was a simple question to check anyone's reliability, but it was like he was asking that question to himself.

And forgetting everything, showing my perfect set of teeth to him I grabbed his hand higher than I had held dolly, I muttered, "always!"

Now, things were making more sense to me.

Whenever I ask him something he never answered it in the first moment he always looked into my eyes, tried to search for those memories, in a hope that one day he will find them.

A sudden creak of voice echoed in my ears. He was speeding up the car like it was a racecourse.
Everything started floating ahead of me.

"We are going to have an accident if you didn't stop!"
I yelled or maybe tried to but it sounded like a fragile one over the sound of the wind.

Still, the steering wheel was in his hand as he looked at me forgetting everything else in this world. As it doesn't exist for him at all.

"Do you trust me?"

And suddenly, he was not the eighteen-year boy anymore. He was that looking like that boy whom I had seen just a moment ago; wearing a grey polo shirt and black pants he has extended his hand ahead of me.

Before I could think of anything else before I could scold him about his outrageous behaviour. The hell before even I could stop myself. I had already extended my hand to meet his cold ones, "Always?" I had whispered without even knowing what I was doing.

****

The car was parked ahead of a two-story building Apartment and the neighbour one has the three-story building apartment
I know I've never been here. I've never felt the same air of here; never seen the sky of the thousand stars, but I can feel everything from here. It's a connection that has a contrast between here and the back in Manhattan. And no matter where I live my whole life- either in different cities or in various countries, but nothing can replace Florida from my heart. I can be anywhere on the earth, but the compassion between me, and this place cannot be replaced not even in a billion dreams.

I can see the lifeless garden of the house. I can feel in every inch of my body as something has been missing from it. Something so strong, and yet so vulnerable that it had been held me back from years to summon up my life for years.

Maybe it doesn't make sense, and maybe it did now about the grasping hole inside of my chest.
But what can I do now? When do you realize that the major part you have been missing your life in your whole life has just lost its ways?

And I know there is nothing to be left which I can do.

A blurry scenario started playing ahead of me. Now, the garden was not the dull one with dead wisdom it was blooming with thousand varieties of flowers. Sunshine was making it all crystalline as several stars have come on the ground to make it superior.

The old giant tree of coconut looks astonished and prominent within itself as it was the one who is reaching the sky to challenge its limit.

The prominent weather of Florida, that orangish-yellowish sky was melting into the horizon and birds were flying high until they would get vanished in their homes.

And then I heard a voice; a voice which sound familiar- which have engraved a hole in my chest.

You know love has different forms!

When it was by a lover it will swiftly blow away your mind. You will feel only love and nothing else if it always meant for you. And you will know when it is true or not. Because true love is limitless, it is beyond the universe that feeling cannot be destroyed. It is like a drug that runs in your body through your veins and without it you cannot live. It is like always giving yourself a second preference because the first preference stands for a true lover. When you have not to think before speaking; when you know there is always a person for you no matter what happens.

That's the definition we know about true love right?

But it is not important to find a person and then fell in love with him.
You can always have love in your heart; only it needs a flicker of light to find it.

My love for my father is like this. And I know I am late. I'm very late to realize it. When the moments have already slipped from my fingers but still I'm trying to holding them.

His laughter, his deep- nourished sound-I can still hear it.
For all my seventeen years I kept wondering what had been missing in it. Why my heart aches so much? Still didn't have the good damn idea, but now everything makes sense.

The life-less dull garden still has the presence of him.

I can see him running after a five-six-year-old girl, who was afraid of being lost but they were playing hide and seek not knowing that they will be separated forever.

I can see; myself crying when I fell over a small stone. Before he came to rescue my tears, cole was in my side wiping my tears with his soft thumb. And then their eyes met; A pact of unsaid words was made between them like a promise. Then I realised one thing that I neglected before.

He knew. He knew everything.

"I have lived here before coming into Manhattan. It was my home, my land and he was like my father. He never did anything wrong. He never cheated on your mother. How can he? She was the only lady for him and you were the most precious girl for him, but still, your mother never gave him a chance to explain to clear things.
I don't know that much about your mother but what I know is- she thinks that whatever she is doing is right. She may have done the best things in her carrier but she is lost inside and maybe one day she will realize it as we all do."

Me, crying, begging to be free but mother snatched me from my father's embraced hands and carried me into his car. Then only I heard that sentence for which I've been dreaming about years now, "don't go please don't go. Amanda!"

"Uncle David knew nothing where you were and your mother until one day he saw the newspaper guidelines where her name was mentioned, your mother's. But you know when you remain in dark for years and then suddenly you see a spark. That spark was enough for him to find you, until then I was fifteen. And he was getting weaker days by days seconds by seconds...

...You must be wondering that why didn't I left from here? What the hell I was doing with your father, but truth to be told after my mother's death which happened ten years ago. My father abandoned me in this house all alone with a caretaker only to marry some other woman.
I found what I was craving in your father, and whenever he talks about you; I fell in love with you more.
Two years ago when we find out you were in Florida, we packed our bags and booked our tickets just to remove the loneliness which he and I were feeling. But fate has its thing, it always works the way it wants. It doesn't care about the feelings and most definitely doesn't care about timing...

..Maybe our timing was wrong maybe everything was only a subtle bubble of illusion that needed to be burst because uncle David can bear anything but he couldn't pass a heart attack.

He died after ten days of struggle.
He didn't speak much at his last moments because at the age of forty-five his eyes were behaving of a hundred years. Like he was done with everything, as didn't want to fight anymore. But still, those penetrating eyes said those things which he never needed to say. To do all the things from Florida to Manhattan."

I was trying to console my tears but I couldn't because I was lost of words, I was lost of everything. I felt like the poorest person in the world. And a shred of tears was started blowing out of my eyes like the ocean's water.

He chuckled a sad smile, A smile that has so much pain in it, "and you thought that you were not good enough when you were the winner of Student of the Year Competition." he whispered.

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It was very hard for me to write this chapter. Getting busy with studies and my job, I also got stuck in writer's block.

But anyway I'm here alive with this chapter.

I appreciate your feedback and support, so kindly do some because that's the only thing that makes me happy these days.