The literature student

So it was that she, an 18 year-old girl, committed suicide by swallowing her entire stack of literature notes. She left no explanations for this act, except the body of herself lying on the bed – right hand covering the mouth, left hand clutching the result slip.

When the news came out in the media, they pronounced ‘academic pressure’. She had failed her literature exam. The only F among the As.

When the school discovered her exam script missing, the literature teacher was already back in his country, reunited with his wife and children, and trying to forget everything. He had burned away that piece of love letter pleading him not to go. He had burned away that damning record of memory, which she had written in her usual cursive style, which she had written under the severe eyes of the exam invigilators, within 2 hours in the hall, at the exact same spot where she first kissed him after the rehearsal of the Shakespearean play. Yes, she was Juliet. He was the director. For when she read those lines on stage with all the intensity of passion and youth, they were not to Romeo, but to him down below. And he succumbed.

They made love in the midnight darkness, after the successful performance of the play, after the audience had left, on the stage, behind the curtains, under the watching eyes of gods.

Desire may be the root of suffering but fixation is its heart. Like a lodged thorn, stubborn and unyielding, obsession drove her beyond life and beyond death. She wasn’t in hell. She didn’t sell her soul for that secret knowledge of waiting. It’s all in the books. Always. The literature of living, loving, dying, and returning.

She’s in Limbo. And in Limbo, one waits. She waits by his bed. Waiting for his dream of Earth to be over, waiting for him to wake up from his sleep, waiting for him to hold her in his arms and tell her once more the everlasting beauty of star-crossed lovers.

They would be born again. This time, happily ever after.

She believes in happily ever after.

She has to.

And so, she waits…