The Mark.

I still remember the day my friend returned that book. I hadn't given it to him. The person I had given it to could no more come and return it.

The book was a thin one, a small play that was part of our syllabus. I had given it to him, knowing that he would like it. And he did like it. I can still see the smile he had on his face when I gave it go him; that 'you are not gonna quit are you' kind of smile. I was willing to get the moon for him back then.

When the book was returned, the cover was slightly worn out. It had marks of being twisted; he had this way of rolling the papers he had with him. I guess he had rolled the book too, leaving on its surface a mark of having been with him for a while.

It really amazes me how memories strike us at the strangest of hours. How they surface when we slow down a bit and look at ourselves. Perhaps what we call to be ourself is just a repository of memories, of people we met and times we lived. When you least expect to think about someone their memories come to us in avalanche. They fall up on us like the pile of ever beautiful snow, but then they suffocate us and in that moment, takes away our very breath. The reason why certain memories hurt is simply because they are never to occur again and our silly little hearts, they somehow keep falling back into times that are lost forever.