AN UNUSUAL DAY

That bright reddish dusk that’s falling on your face, making you even prettier than every other day. With the light music in the background, looking at you adjusting that knotted earring from my favourite dress you’re wearing tonight skipped a beat. It’s been 3 years 7 months 4 days and it’s the same boy trying to look into your eyes and confess his feelings. It is that moment when you were ready to finally look at me, the alarm that was lying next to me began to jangle unusually.

Yes, it was unusual. That beautiful dream, my chaotic room, the rushing vehicles down the lane and the world through my window felt unusual. The urge that thumped in me took the bike keys to see you, right away. “Anthena?”, the reeled voice from behind paused me to exit the door. A 25-year-old robotic roommate trying to sync his actions to the voice from the rectangular mobile made my room a metallic lab filled with mobiles. 

The world around me is pretty different this time. Every inch around me seemed like the world of robots living like humans. Wearing the red helmet you gifted me on our third date, I started to travel, passing the two zombies dancing on road for a trending reel, a man suited up talking nothing but 0s and 1s on phone crossing roads, the digital faces stuck in mobiles communicating to a college student plugged with pods was definitely not usual. 

Peeping through the depth of the road from my vision, there’s something conspicuously colourful. Diving myself from these automated lives, overpassing the grating bunch of workaholics, decussating the long bridges that carried the running telebooths, intersecting the pathways of machines filled with reel worlds, the universe was assuredly giving signs to escape to the real world.

The road that looked ordinary and intensely hued started to come closer and nearer as I journeyed through this man-made gadget. As the vision became more clear and transparent, I heard certain noises that were overjoyed voices. Concentrating more on the tones, they were giggles of two young people, a spiritual promising verse, the innocent non-words crawling towards someone and the sounds of flip-flops with a stick. 

Not far from where I started to see the blue sky with candy clouds, pointing downwards the footpath where an old couple holding their hands walking with a stick in flip-flops, carrying love between them. Half the road down the way, a tiny toddler murmuring, trying to hold a multicoloured butterfly that was lying on his nose. Adjacent to that kid, the giggles of a young couple became louder, sitting on a beautiful hammock swing having coffee together. 

Well, that road ended as I heard the clink of the church bell opposite your hostel. Standing in front of the guard that won’t let me in, I saw you standing near the gate, adjusting the knotted earring I gifted to you on your birthday, and that skipped my beat. This time, that one eye contact you made to me, flashed our entire life ahead, made me fall on my knees and ask you, “Will you marry me?”

Yes, it was UNUSUAL.