Shayan Afzal

In the quiet repose of an afternoon, the remnants of a solitary repast lingered upon the table, a tableau of humble yet intimate delight. A bowl of watermelon, hewn into rustic cubes, lay amidst a scatter of feta, a juxtaposition as striking as the convergence of memories and the present that often haunted my thoughts. Each morsel, dusted with white as if the very essence of time had settled upon it, was like the fragmented recollections of summer days past, days that stretched out with languorous intensity under the vast canopy of the cerulean sky.

I found myself contemplating the scene before me, not merely as an observer of a simple fruit salad but as a traveler who has stumbled upon an artifact of life’s unpretentious beauty. There was a novel that lay open, its spine creased and worn, much like the fabric of my own being, creased by the countless experiences etched upon my soul. The spoon beside it, a silent witness to the act of consumption, seemed to echo the quiet satisfaction that comes from savoring not just the food, but the very act of living.

How often had I, like this spoon, been the companion to such solitary moments, a mere instrument in the symphony of day-to-day existence? The soft fabric beneath the bowl whispered tales of forgotten afternoons spent in the company of friends now absent, their laughter etched into the ether of memory. In the pattern of that fabric, I saw the intricate weave of my own life, threads of joy and sorrow so closely entwined that to unravel one would be to unravel the very essence of who I was.