Silver Moon

She strummed on her guitar as the gentle waves softly kissed her bare feet. Every touch of water took her to a different world altogether as she softly sang her song that night. The waves were like her only audience and the lone silver moon far away like a silent, distant admirer. A single ponytail gave a semblance of order to her usually wavy, chestnut hair. Her glasses were raised above on her forehead as always when she sung. She kept singing one song after another that evening.

As the tides were receding the waves stopped touching her after a while. She stepped down from the rock she was perched on and went and sat on a lower rock. Her faded jeans were rolled up to her knees and her rubber slippers had a healthy residue of sand which the waves brought along. She wanted to be continuously touched by the waves as she sung.

James Taylor, Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, RD Burman, Gulzar…her songs kept flowing smoothly that evening. It all felt seamless as she waltzed from one song to the next. Each song bound by a common thread of memory. Memories of a different time. A happy time. A beautiful phase. Unlike now, when life seemed to exist only in name. So lost was she in her singing she didn’t realise when the silver moon had cast a beautiful shadow on her face, almost like a delicate kiss from her distant admirer. She carried on playing.

It was with Carole King’s Way Over Yonder that she finally broke down. Her voice quivered as she almost choked in her own emotions, her strumming stopped. He was within her all the time but at some rare moments he would come out of her senses to have this effect on her. She placed her guitar on the side and broke down.

Moments later she walked along the beach the guitar slung across her shoulder. Her white shirt drenched by the water, her eyes drenched by her memories of him. She kept humming as she disappeared out of sight that night.

The silver moon shone on.