The first time, I greeted anxiety or maybe it was the other way round, you stood next to me on stage mumbling, “It’s going to be fine.” I looked at you like the caesura in a song when the music stops and for a moment everything seemed still. Caesura, often termed as a false stop in classical music, was like an escape from my anxiety dissolving into three simple words. For a tiny second, the lights had stopped moving. My tapping feet had stopped. The woodwork waited in silence.
The moment I exhaled my breath, the world came rushing back like a slow violin piece- softly tragic. The opera had just begun. You stood just next to me but we were light years away. I was dancing with the lights- a puppet, a ballerina to the tunes of my anxious mind. The lights moved faster than ever, the woodwork beat like drums. Each sound so profound that my voice seemed lost, spilling void words into an audience with no faces. I was not on the stage, not next to you but on the lights like an uncontrolled body filled with anxiety. When we got down, you smiled at me and said, “You did well.” Caesura.
I still think about that day and maybe you are somewhere, in a far away dimension where the lights move slowly- a slow dance embracing you in itself; you look radiant. Maybe you are listening to sad music waiting for the grand pause in the arms of your lover. His each touch seems like tiny rifts in music- soothing. And I am here, sitting by the window dancing with lights, wondering about you. The music is getting slower. The lights are getting dimmer. The grand pause is approaching. You were my caesura all along.
