Old Soul

* Old Soul ~ Abhijit *

She was all of nineteen when we met, but she could easily have been thirty nine the way she was.

Old souls never have it easy. For one, they find it hard to explain why they behave the way they do.

How do you explain to someone that the wrinkles they have are not on their face but on their hearts.

But I knew she was an old soul the moment I saw her.

It was her eyes, and the way they looked at the world - not disdain, not apathy, just an expression of mild bafflement.

She used to look at me like I was a tiny part of an elaborate painting that she liked to study from time to time. But when I used to look at her in the eye, she used to avert her gaze. Nor did she let me study the pretty picture that her face was. All I ever got were sideways glances at her nose, cheeks, eyes, chin, like reading a mystery novel that you know holds the key to the mystery in the end, but still going through the torture of reading it from page one.

Torture, or perhaps fun. With her, the definitions changed all the time.

© 2015