Cold showers and pensive hope.

Chilly, cold showers bringing the biting water down my back, never help.

No matter how much you want the icy cold water to chase the pain gnawing at your insides away, it never does. Contrary to popular belief, the sound of water falling on and around you doesn’t mute the piercing shrieks echoing within your head either.

It was the twenty-fifth day of September when I rushed into the bath to wash the tears away, wishing against all odds that the biting cold water from the power shower would somehow make the chill running through my spine vanish. It was one of those mellow autumn afternoons but the warmth was blocked by the frigid tiled walls that caged me. Hope is what keeps the weakest of us going and at that moment, all I could do was to pray to the god I had never believed in-pray that the water pelting on my bare back would cleanse me of all my flaws so that you could fall in love with me once more, right from square one.

But cold showers never help.

It is the eleventh day of June or, as the weather forecasters would solemnly report, the hottest day of the year. The ebony table next to me is spilling with haphazard stacks of papers, accusing me of all the work I’ve lately been avoiding nonchalantly. The alarm I had set for four in the morning goes off; a clear indication of yet another sleepless night I had wasted on unlimited walks down the memory lane. I discreetly hit the snooze button. Time to study. I warily take a look at the textbooks lying next to me. Or not. Escapism often comes naturally to our being. Desperate to make the time fly, I mechanically make my way to the shower, knowing innately that it’s a lost cause-they have never helped but human mind is a gullible little entity.

As tiny but determined droplets set off to make multiple labyrinths on my nude frame, I close my eyes shut against the falling water-as if refusing to look at the demons will make them disappear down the washbasin, as if the passive pattering will drown out your parting words that still bounce off the corners of my skull.

But, alas, for us and the burning rage within our cores, cold showers never help.

-fin-

As promised, this is the first of many pieces of my writing that I will continue to update weekly now, or so I hope (till this New Year's resolution doesn't wear out and/or I do not succumb to the dreaded writer's block.)