When he came after thirty years, Vaishali thought her heart would break from the sight. His hair was grey, his shoulders softer, but to her eyes he was as handsome as the first day she had fallen in love.
When he rose to leave, she wanted to kiss him — to hold his face, to tell him how long she had waited. But his friend was there, and her family hovered nearby. All she dared was to place her hand gently on his back.
It was a touch filled with everything she could not say.
He turned, smiled faintly, and was gone.
That night her pillow was damp with tears. Days later, her children noticed the quiet in her eyes, the heaviness in her voice. She gave them no answer.
Then, one evening, her phone lit up. His name.
The first messages were simple, careful. He asked about her health, her children. Then he wrote: Do you remember how we first met? Three decades ago?
Her hand trembled. She remembered too much — the jasmine in bloom outside her window, the night she waited for him to come. The air smelled of rain, and he never arrived.
He confessed his fear: I thought you might not care anymore. At our age, who still needs love?
He didn’t write that he’d been married for twenty of those years, that his own pillow had known a different silence.
She didn’t answer at once. But when he shared a small worry, she responded with care. He took it as a sign. A woman who listens, he thought, has already opened her door.
Soon they spoke every day, their words circling the same wound.
“Why didn’t you write?” she asked.
A long pause. Then: “I was too proud. I thought you had forgotten me. Why didn’t you come?”
“My father was ill. I had no choice.” It was only half the truth, but it was enough for now.
“I cried for you.”
“And I,” he wrote back, “have waited for you in a hundred other cities, with a hundred other faces, but never with my whole heart.”
One night he told her, “Do not take tension for me.”
She replied, “It is my duty to care for you. And I will not share you with anyone.”
In her plain words he heard the wisdom of love: fierce, unpolished, unstoppable.
At last she wrote: Give me a day. Only one day. Promise me you will meet me again, and I will carry that day as my life’s fulfilment.
She pressed send with tears streaming. The phone glowed in the dark room. Almost instantly, three dots appeared, pulsing. He was typing. She held her breath, her heart a frantic bird against her ribs, at last refusing to hide.
Maq Masi Blog 
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