I bartered my soul for a chance to kiss the free wind. It seemed to hide right above my head and glide just outside my door taunting me into a rage of obsession. So naturally I chased it. In a way I felt I always needed it. And when I couldn’t capture it, I’d drop to my knees and worship its every glimpse at passing.

But then one day, to my surprise, it came rather relentlessly. Ubiquitously. And so naturally I had no other choice but to simply ignore it. After all, it was just the wind.

But then I sat back in a wooden chair on the old porch and thought. How in the mere seconds did i relegate my deepest desires to the basement of the unwanted?

Why did I spend thousands of hours for seconds of euphoria. Why did I eat from the tree I climbed to kill myself, and why did I find the last glimpse of it to be the sweetest and most painful.

The confusion kills me at times because I was told of the overflowing fountain out lies that suffocate the blind chaser. And I was also warned many times of the the death that follows the oblivious overconsumption. But the letters failed to tell me of the elusivity. They conveniently omitted the speed at which it runs from you and hides right behind your every turn. They saw no value in reminding me that the shadow can only be caught when it is following someone else. For the second I turn to taste it, it disappears.

I scratched the few hairs left atop my head as the rest I had pulled out against my better judgement. And all I could do was sit there. And when the wind came back I was sure of one thing. That I could not fight the fate if I gave in. If I attempted yet again to give it my lips so effortlessly. Nor did I find it right to let it go away.

This time I began to whistle. The soft harmonic pitches began to blend with the wind. It was neither imposing nor dismissive. It was in full balance with this bodiless body. And with each change of tune the wind began to dance around me. It began to put on a show that my eyes couldn’t see, but my skin could revel in. It did me a favour I did not ask, but needed above all.

Then I took a golden opportunity and posed to it, “When I ask for you, you scurry. When I value you you disappear. Why so? Why so?”

She didn’t respond. She had no other reasons to tell me the truth. But a smile snuck on to my pale face. It tickled me and struck the back of my brain. I knew she was not mine to have. The force of desire crippled me into thinking it could last. And the stupidity of my hope led me to believe that she could be captured. She was never after me. She was here for the sake of being here. Governed by the laws of motion. Subject to the rules of independence, And caught by nothing. For the wind flows in and out freely and therefor wants something she can get anywhere. There was nothing truly beautiful here. Just a man and the passing wind. The thing that would capture my psyche and eat away at my mind.

But it was my fault for ever thinking that it was perpetual or even remotely sturdy. Sturdy like the boat my mind climbed into. I looked back one last time at the shore, and smiled as I began to float away from it. Engulfed by the endlessness of the salty water. Bathing in the peace behind my ears . And as I laid back the wind tickled my face once again right before it struck my sail. And there, wedged between the unstable truth and the blue below, I could do nothing but smile as the gulls glided over me, tune into the jingles, and wink at the innocent sky above. The passing wind.

In a way it was never worth chasing in the first place.