𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐲𝐳𝐞𝐝 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭 ✔︎

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A face with thousands of questions,eyes dried of tears and lips pale as dried leaf like snowflake.

“Bilal-” she spelled my name whisperingly and didn't wait for a moment to engulf my chest in her arms.

I knew she was weeping, drenching the cloth of my chest. My heart wept there too. I resisted the urge to hug her back,to cross my arms around her shoulder and forget all the agonies that was rooted in my life. But I couldn't-

I just couldn't.

I felt an ardent scandal slicing my heart and I pushed her away,far at a distance where she narrowly escaped from falling. Her hand got wounded and she didn't even notice that. From the corner of her eye,she looked at me with such look in her eyes that only asked why.

She was too late to understand that I had already known about her truth.

“ You betrayed me,Husna. You broke my trust. How could you! ” I spat the words at her on which her face quivered. She stood in my periphery coldly and weak.

“Bilal-” the secondth time her lips uttered my name.

“Don't call me from now on,you have no place in this house. You have taken all you needed,now leave ” I crustly hooded my tears blinking,never had I felt so hard to stop them from cascading and display my weakness.

“It is not what you think,I didn't ever leave you !” Said her pained tone aching my ears.

“ It is,Husna. It is. I thought you were kind,you would look after my mother for the sake of our-not our,only mine, my love.”

“ I did it ”

“ Lie. Don't lie now at least for your self respect. I had already written in the letter that I will not force you to stay but I-I... really trusted you,your heart and the innocence that I saw your eyes. In sober fact,they were blurry,they were fake. Sorry I couldn't recognize you”  a pain clouded my mind while wording the feelings that I stored in the treasure of my heart.

“ I didn't break your trust! I was there from the first,ever. But I had to go for—”

“ How many folds of lies are you gonna lay on truth? If you were there,why couldn't I see you yesterday? Where did you disappear?”

“ I went to my parents,just because we were out of—” I saw something glittering in her eyes which were tinkling like waterdrops,capable enough to melt my heart where I kept thunders hidden. The look I gave paused her from continuing her opinions. She knew, I wasn't believing in her words. Her eyes filtered more with unquenchable thirst of my belief.

For a moment,I could have trusted her forgetting all the truths that I had saw before then.

But I wasn't someone to regain trust on someone effortlessly after getting broken on such fragile matter.

I coiled my mind with just one word,
'Ma'.

Above the blindness I had for her love,I couldn't overcome Husna's innocent face and honest words.

I still needed solid proof to trust her.

I had already seen a lot. The missing money from cupboard could define nothing more than Husna's betrayal. I contemplated.

I worded it conditionally,

“ There's no such scope I could believe in your words for ”

“ If I wasn't there,who kept your mother like this then? Still alive and harmless?” Her tears dried as a hiccup was sounded from her mouth.

“ It was Allah,” I fearlessly facted.

“ And you think Allah doesn't know the truth? Yes,it was Allah who kept me and Ma alive. Because,YOU being a reckless person left us with no basics of food or necessities! Had you even thought how we would survived? I almost took you as.........DEAD” suddenly rage was arising in her tone and the lava of her eyes frightened me of the unknown. She was collapsing on her knees with the stream of droplets deserting her pupils.

“What? That's not true! I had ensured every thing before leaving! Only if you had stayed,you would know ” I didn't also let my side go astray, I gave a clarification.

“ Huh! That was only for months,Bilal Ahmed! Then we were dragged in scarcity! The delivery boy didn't came for a month and two weeks! ” She shrieked halting a breath.

“ Impossible,he is assigned for a year! I, myself had an agreement with him”

“ That's not what I am worried about,Bilal. The truth is, you left me ALONE. And still I had been thinking of you in every dream and daydream. Have you ever realized what we were going through? Had you even cared to call me for a while? Just a call?.........”  she paused for a dip of silence and spitted,

" NEVER, you never came for us"

That's when I realized,

we were on the same boats and same insecurities for each other. We both were unaware of our states but stringed with the same bond we had. I was mistaken,so was she. It was like time played a hide and seek with us.