Unwritten

There is this clear, brown, whiskey-ish tinged glass of Earl Grey resting lazily on the table in front of me. Its been sitting like that for ten minutes now, and even though I really want to sip in the warm liquid and feel my nose and throat react to the subtle strength of the concoction like a cold child wrapped in the benevolence of a blanket, I merely inhale the aroma and stop. And smile. And remember. Wasn’t he similar to this cup of tea – magnificent in his beauty like amber in a crystal goblet, but someone to inhale, not someone to sip from too soon? Or ever?

I wasn't falling for him. I did, however, for a brief moment, fall into him. He had a careless stare, but one which could pierce right through you when he so desired. He had a million irrelevant details to talk about, but somehow, when his velvet voice touched the words, they acquired importance, even if they were mouthed out in a slumber-deprived, slurred speech. There was so much visibly wrong about him, and yet, there was nothing I could point at that I did not like. He had it, he flaunted it. And no, not in the average style of a self-possessed narcissist. I mean, narcissist he was, but strangely enough, he flaunted his vulnerabilities with, almost, a performative ease. Perhaps that’s what he was – a performer, and a darn skilful one at that. Perhaps I was seeing him exactly as he wanted to be seen by me, my own judgement feeling miniaturized under his imposing (yet not arrogant) personality. In plain terms, perhaps he was a jerk. But then, perhaps he was not. And this dint of a fiercely enticing possibility kept my senses in an overdrive – for I had to use some, and curb some. I was not yet sipping, you see.

At the end of it all, I reckon I could finally arrive at a safe inference about him. He was not a majestic idea bound in the rhythmic prosody of a refined poem. He was the gloriously unwritten plot of a novel which held the promise of indecipherability since its inception in the author’s brain. If anything, he was that. To top it, he had a cute smile. And since remembering that smile puts me off-track in a strangely lunatic sort of way, I should probably focus on gulping down the cup of Earl Grey, now cold, but also pregnant with reflections of my thoughts, or him. A cup of tea, sometimes, is all it takes.