borrowed morning

Every morning, before the sun fully stretched across the rooftops, Aahil would wake up to the smell of chai and the soft hum of old Bollywood songs drifting from the kitchen. And every morning, he would find Meher standing barefoot on the balcony, cup in hand, staring at the horizon as if she were asking the sky for one more day.

Their apartment was small — just two rooms and a flickering tube light that always buzzed at night. But for Aahil, it was a world wrapped in warmth, in quiet laughter, in the hush between sentences that only love understands.

They weren’t married. Not officially. In fact, they hadn’t even told their families where they were. They had run away, not out of rebellion, but because they wanted time — just a little bit.

Meher was sick.

Stage four. Terminal. The word felt too heavy for someone so light, someone who wore anklets that jingled like wind chimes and laughed with her whole body.

The doctors had said six months, maybe less. That was four months ago.

So they made a decision: No hospitals. No treatments. No beeping machines.

Just them, a rented apartment in a quiet neighborhood of Lahore, and borrowed mornings.

Each day, they made a little ritual of living.

They bought fresh flowers from the corner stall — roses, sometimes lilies when Meher felt fancy. They cooked simple meals: daal, rice, and once, disastrously, sushi. She painted. He wrote. They read to each other from old books they'd bought from the secondhand stall on Mall Road. Sometimes poetry, sometimes murder mysteries.

When the pain was manageable, they’d walk to the nearby lake at sunset. She loved watching the geese glide across the surface, like they knew something the world didn’t.

"Do you ever wonder," Meher once asked as she leaned her head on his shoulder, "if some people are only meant to exist for a short time, like fireworks?"

Aahil had squeezed her hand.

"Maybe," he said. "But even fireworks light up the whole sky when they go."

She didn’t reply. She didn’t need to.

One day, as the sky turned pink with morning, Meher didn’t wake.

She wasn’t gone — not yet. Just asleep, but shallow, like her body was already forgetting how to stay.

Aahil made tea anyway. Sat by her side. Read her the poems she used to love. Held her hand and watched her chest rise and fall like the tide.

That evening, she opened her eyes.

Barely.

He leaned in.

“Did I miss the morning?” she whispered, her voice a thread.

He nodded slowly. “It waited for you.”

She smiled, weak but real. “Then we got lucky. Another borrowed day.”

He kissed her forehead.

Three days later, Meher left — not suddenly, not dramatically. Just... peacefully. Like a candle letting itself fade.

Aahil didn’t cry that night. He made her favorite tea. Sat on the balcony. Held her anklet in his palm and listened to the wind. It sounded like her laugh.

Weeks passed. The world continued — with its traffic, its arguments, its new shows and breaking news. But Aahil held on to the slowness they had built together.

He kept the balcony garden alive. He played the same old Bollywood songs in the morning. He read out loud to an empty room. He still made two cups of chai.

And every morning, he sat on the balcony at dawn, watching the sun rise, whispering her name into the sky.

Because they were never promised forever.

But those mornings — those quiet, stolen, beautiful mornings — were theirs.

Even if borrowed.

End.