Yawn

 A woman whose life has been one big prolonged yawn — a boring stretch of time punctuated by borrowed breaths and pauses, I saw my husband taking a big yawn in his coma. The yawn when I first saw bought out the little sparkle I didn't know I had in my eyes. But when he yawned, I saw life. For in that yawn, I heard the murmur of return, the familiar echo of life uncoiling, of breath winding back into being, It amped up my hopes and expectations of his recovery and made me once again wait for him. The kind of waiting I have always been familiar with. In courtyards fragrant with cumin and smoke, through the lattice of rod-bound windows, my gaze used to braid with longing. The chaos of kitchen and children and duty blurred around the edge, but the center — always — was him. To the long stretches of sun-drenched afternoons where my eyes ached scanning the road for him, watching, waiting, willing a figure to emerge. Slowly my panic used to dissolve the moment I used to spot his face emerging through crowds not because I loved him but because I never knew how the world used to work. He used to pay bills, arrange travel and book trains. I wasn't allowed to travel alone but once I got married, my only duty was to wait for his instructions to board the bus or train. He used to manage all of that and the crippling anxiety within me used to just shun down the moment his face used to appear through the crowd. Men fear 'a know it all woman' won't sit at their deathbeds with them, no wonder they fantasize the archetype of "Born Sexy Yesterday" characters of science fiction movies but what they don't care about is when they leave, gears shift and the compass gets handed to us women. Some of us then make it to freedom but mediocre ones like us remain shattered and keep waiting because that's all we know, To simply wait! Though I am adept at waiting but he is now not kind. The same yawn got followed by his demise. His yawn is a reminder that even halfway to heaven, he had found a way to make my heart skip a beat. His yawn kept me on edge — on my toes, in orbit around the hope of him. Soon my spine tuned to the frequencies of his absence and I realize how My entire life has been nothing but just a one big laborious yawn. And once the grand yawn will be sealed by my lips, my days would be over too. And now I wonder —  Will someone mistake my yawn for hope? 

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