And I Wait....

My daily pandemonium began as usual...the sun had hardly peeped from the darkened clouds that we were off to work- me and my folks. They chirped at me to come along with every flight they took. The leaves had turned golden and a yellow light filled the surrounding. It had a rich ambiance of glow and my my...how I loved an autumn season. Along with the glow it filled in us a sort of anxiousness and hurry, to gather up stock for the coming winter. All in all it was certainly a busy season. Enjoying the yellowish tint of nature I continued to collect grains in my beak and carried it home- tucking them safely within the hold of my beaks. The sun had swelled and the cool breeze soothed my feathers. I perched on the branch just beside my nest and rested for a while, heaving a sigh of relief at the freshly collected seeds enough for the winter. 

It was then that I saw her; a young maiden. Every day I see many, as the place I stayed wasn’t an aloof one, rather it was a bit crowded with people bustling about, in rush. But something about her air told me that she was in no such hurry to the point that she looked lost.

I look past many such people in a day but it was she who made me stay. I did…. She walked, dragging her feet and making an uneasy sound of gravels crunching beneath her tender feet. She entered my arena and sat on the bench below my tree, seemingly to avoid the lush green lawn which was watered just a while ago. She was dressed all too cozily… the climate can be hard sometimes for the humans I suppose. She sat on the sunlit part of the bench, wanting to bask a little. She opened a thick book, adjusted her spectacles and started reading.

Now this was one thing I always wished to do- read. The thick and thin books they carried and the glossy pages in it always marveled me. I was always left to wonder what lied beneath them, what secrets were held back, what mysteries were hidden and what wonders it had to present. I shifted my place to get a better view of her and most importantly the book she held. But no… I couldn't see a thing, her head was buried into it and furthermore her long ebony black hair did the rest part of hiding. I kept staring at this little thing she was engrossed within minutes into those mysterious pages. I perched on a lower branch to look at her.

Her face was calm, eyes weary- a little water with smudged kohl on it, she hadn't lined it today as she did the other days. A wisp of cool breeze swept past us and absentmindedly she tucked those pair of legs under her body to shield them from the hard weather. 

A couple of strands of her hair kept falling on her face, trying to obstruct one of her eyes from sight. Every now and then she kept tucking them behind her ears but they kept disturbing her. I wondered how patiently she adjusted them time and again without even a single sigh of exhaust. Those strands made me smile, as though they were playing with her. I looked keenly at that little face- tender yet matured. It spoke measures for its own. The unlined-weary eyes, the dry lips that she kept wetting, the windblown hair that had been carelessly tossed into a low pony tail … all these told me a lot. She wasn't in her normal self this day.

My thoughts got interrupted when a drop of tear traced its way all along her chubby cheeks and fell on that sacred page of the book she was pretending to read. Her fragile fingers traced along the uneven mark on the page the drop had left behind. She looked away, afraid to catch anyone’s sight, afraid to tell the world that she was crumbling- my eyes were still on her- I didn’t want her to know.

That instant I knew why of all places around, she had chosen this bench, her purpose of being here. She was running, away from all, hiding beneath the cloaks of smile and ducking from the world. Her glance fell on me and at that very moment I froze.

Had she seen me staring, had she noticed me, will she shoo me away?? My brain got bombarded with queries of all sorts and I could no more feel my wings. I felt numb. After a fleeting second of two that felt like an eternity she looked away. Nothing in me interested her I thought, but for me it was a relief, a way big one. She stared into nowhere, with eyes that betrayed all her intentions to hide things.

With every footsteps of people she looked their way, wanting to disappear to catch no one’s attention. Her tender lips moved and uttered things that were audible only to herself. This part of humans irritated me the most, they talked a lot with themselves and I always wished to hear what it was.

“Chirp chirp…hey dear aren’t you coming along? We need more stock to last this winter…did you hear me Joe?” mamma shouted from behind, breaking the chain of thoughts within me.

“Yes mamma …” I sighed, not wanting to even shift my glance of that angel. I reluctantly flapped my wings and cast a longing glance at her, trembling at the thought that she might be gone when I will be back.

“Mamma… she’s so sad, do you know what it might be?”

“Whom are you talking about Joe?”

“The little girl sitting there.”

“Oh that one? I too saw her. She must be going through tough teenage.”

“Teenage? What’s that mamma?”

“Aah…kiddo these humans have this strange period of time when they get so tangled with their confused emotions. They term it teenage.”

“Am I going through teenage too?”

“Haha… no lad. You are too young for it moreover we don’t have any such thing. We are more independent than them.”

“Mmm…mamma I’m flying west.”

“Ok kiddo, take care and see you at night.”

“See you mamma.”

I gave a thought on teenage. Wow it was something different, interesting. It took me a little more time than usual to return from west. The sun had hidden behind the fluffy clouds and she was gone. And the bench looked as if no one had ever sat there. I yearned and chirped in sorrow for one little glance of her, just one. The place looked unattended without her and strangely in just a part of the day I had got addicted to that beautiful sight.  She hadn’t shooed me away like numerous others and those affectionate pair of eyes left a mark within me.

The golden leaves started falling, announcing the arrival of winter. It passed blissfully and the stocks did last….so did the spring and summer that followed. It was time to gather up again- autumn. But leaving an ache in my heart I never saw her.

To this day I wait for the sound of gravel crunching beneath her feet, to see her sit on that bench reading the glossy paged of bound books. I wanted to look at her once more, without her notice, without any expectation, without any hope of enjoying her glance. Without even the slightest intention of hurting her. All I wanted was to cast a glance once more at that maiden, to look at her and to love her in complete silence. Beyond extreme reach of words, beyond worlds… beyond all. Yes I had fallen in love.