By Anam Tassadaq
     Of 4th yr



           Sleep was altogether gone. Her mind taken over by melancholy. Or more aptly a void. A lifeless abyss. A poignant silence. This was the day she embraced life. And death. She was totally oblivious of her beating heart, and her consummate insanity. Her gray matter had only a vague perception of her surroundings, and to the fact that she was alive. All that she was sensate to was a brazen tempest inside her wetware, an overwhelming blather, spawning within her an urge to jump off a high cliff, to live, and to die. She had been rambling through the city, with an air of surprisingly unruffled nonchalance. But there still were moments of sanity, a long forgotten connection with reality. Saneness abruptly snapped. And there she was, on the Brooklyn bridge, standing all alone. And still. For the past five minutes. Or hours. She had no idea. 

She stood there, silent and bewildered. The wind dallied with her disheveled curls, whispered into her ears. She could hear the occasional horn of a passing car, the distant cackle of a child, or the buoyant patter of passers-by. She could feel the bridge, the metal and the concrete. The water, still as the ineffable placidity on her pale face, spangled in the moonlight. The full moon provoked her thoughts. But she stood there, numb and indifferent to the life around, asphyxiated by the normalcy in her surroundings. This was the moment she fathomed her dying sanity, and heard the insistent cries of the desperate silence entrenched deep into her.  She was constantly rubbing her hands against the diamond on her finger. It reminded her of something beautiful, and painful. She tried hard to remember what it was, but the effort drained her of her already withered puissance, her neurons reluctantly giving in to the amnesia.
Her mind was achingly tied-up, taking her through a reminiscence of noxious desperations, hopelessly cobbling up absurd plans. She wanted to run through the entire city. From Manhattan to Brooklyn. To New Jersey. She wanted to get to the top of the Empire state building, to gaze down upon NYC. She wanted to go to time square theatre for one last time, and  to bunjee jump off the statue of liberty.
But she kept staring at the water below. And the water kept gawking back, not daring to take its glower off her even for a twinkle. She tried to think straight. ‘I think I’ve gone mad’, she beseeched herself. ‘Or maybe you were born this way’, came the solemn rebuttal. She could feel the chilled wind, now spanking her face, trying to hold her back, asking her not to do this, compelling her to believe in her sanity, begging her to go back to life. She wouldn’t listen. She was now ravishing irresistibly in her impeccable asininity.
And voila! She jumped, into the water, into its limitless bounds, into the abysmal chasm of her fragile mind. The water strived to grab her, endeavoring to give her back to the city. And to life. But death was imminent, and achingly sought-after. The water, remorseful at the brevity of her life, vacillatingly fondled her. Loathing its own powers, it faintheartedly succumbed. She breathed her last. The bird burst into flames, and from those ashes, rose a fledgling phoenix, reborn anew to live again!