The wind chime was a melancholy window from which a choir of sadness filled my heart to the extent of non-existence. It was a beautifril day. An old, familiar breeze, in a tremulous fountain of colour hissed and whispered silently on my mulberry red ears. Droplets of rain danced on the window silt like bricks on a lane. I remembered Auro.

Auro and Auro.

He was my son- the pride in my nose that I could notjustwashofflabellingitas 'dirt'. Born and diagnosed with AIDs at the tender age of three, I saw my toddler grow up more bold, courageous and passionate than any other human being on the bivouac of this world. Yet his father, untouched by a love so sanctified left us for isolation and social acceptance.

While Auro's physical health was climbing up the stairs of frailty, his indecisive and inquisitive mind became attracted to every petite and fundamental thing happening to him. With electrifying despondency the other day, he asked me about death.

I said he was going to die soon.

Impressively, he was continuing school with zeal and fervour every new dawn. Any other word that his brain adhered to, was the tunnel of discovery and enormous human emotion that he bravely skipped through. Some nights, with the warm of black coffee on my wrists, an eerie fear of the curtains being drawn and my Auro withering away with the wind, enveloped my heart.

Chicken wings with soya sauce- the delicacy whose smell not only blocked his nostrils but also his haywire and relentless mind. On witty fridays, when a foam of crimson sunrise had drenched the seven skies, we would go out wild for the chicken wings. Those were times when we walked, really walked. I took my two, calculated step with him taking his zigzag, unstable ones.

He again asked me about death.

Auro: "Momma, what is it to die?"

A hoarse voice of mine proclaimed that when you die tomorrow starts without you and you float with angels on the azure sky. Then I could see the depth of his dimple, making lunatics as he fused into a shaky, I-use-colgate-toothpaste-smile.

The next day, he stealthily brought in his fists, now enclosed an A-4 size paper. He held it down the bottom of my nose. I grinned.

It was a mesmerizing poem of David Romano.

"If tomorrow starts without me

and I am not there to see

If the sun should rise and find your eyes all filled with tears for me..."

A tormenting tear shrivelled off my cheek. He hugged me in an extreme force.

The midnight stars had slumbered off on their comfort zones. Sitting crossed-legged on the highly-raised bed adorned with satin bedcover, my index finger etching parabolas on Auro's stretched forehead, I repeated the number of an old relative on my subconscious mind. I flung opened the curtains in the room that till now supported suffocation. Smooching Auro's veiny, injection-plugged hand I left the hospital room with a stride on my pace.

I ringed Auro's father.

The hospital rang me back.

Auro, with a chill on the bones and a deep etch in the heart, breathed his last on the warmth of my body. The human sentiment that grasped me on that instant was one that fragmented and defragmented me at once. Tear is an understatement of a mother's love for her son.

On the lapse of seconds, a drop of smelly rain rustled on my palms. His funeral had started. It was the soothing voice of Auro's father echoing on my ears, from a distance,

"It seems to me you lived your life

Like a candle in the wind

Never fading with the sunset

When the rain set in..."

"Goodbye, Auro". Saying goodbye was never this hard.

Fariha Naaz Shafi writes fiction