The Bottle

Some days weigh heavy on the soul—days when the air itself feels like a burden and the sun overstays its welcome. On such days, I drag myself through the hours, waiting for the night to arrive, waiting for the moment when I can finally step outside, breathe, and let the world shrink into the silent streets.

I am a creature of the night, not by habit, but by comfort. It is in the darkness that I dissolve, unseen, unobserved, unnoticed. The stars blink like knowing eyes, and the empty roads hum with a solitude that speaks my language.

I dwell in nights that swallow me whole,

Where silence whispers, where shadows console.

Stars don’t just sparkle; they glimmer and gleam,

Marking the edges of half-lost dreams.

When words feel weightless, unheard in the day,

When the sun feels foreign, the dark lets me stay.

Under its shroud, I shed my disguise,

No masks, no lies—just truth in my eyes.

But this story isn’t about the nights I usually spend alone. It’s about what happened one night and kept happening after.

One such night, as my feet carried me aimlessly down my usual path, I saw her—a girl kicking an empty coke can down the street. A simple act, nothing extraordinary. I barely thought about it, let alone her. But the next night, there she was again, kicking the same can like it was some secret ritual.

Curiosity got the better of me. I approached her and asked, "Why do you always kick that can?"

She stopped, turned to me with a half-smile, and said:

"It’s an art, you see, to keep it in stride,

To guide its path but never decide.

No strings, no chains, yet it follows along,

A dance of control between right and wrong."

"Ignore it once, and it wobbles away,

Life is no different—it never will stay."

Something about her words wove themselves into me, like a riddle waiting to be unravelled. I mirrored her steps, trying to master the rhythm. Three days in, I was good at it. But between those kicks, I hadn’t just learned to keep a can rolling—I had unknowingly made a friend.

Her name was Samaira.

She became my moonlight companion, and I became the butterfly disturbing her solitude—a presence both intrusive and welcome. Our conversations were simple yet deep, weightless yet heavy, like the very night we walked through.

I told her the night was my solace, my home,

She told me the dark made her feel alone.

I said I always feel someone seeks me,

She said she is still searching keenly.

She said she is still searching keenly.

She spoke of a friend who kicked bottles too,

A ghost of the past, a trail lost in dew.

She retraced their steps, but found only air,

I swore to her—I would always be there.

For two more nights, we met like this. And then, she disappeared. Just like that.

I searched for her for days, walking the same path, waiting to hear the familiar sound of a can rolling down the pavement. But she was nowhere to be found. The silence felt different now, heavier somehow, like an unfinished conversation lingering in the air.

We were no more than passing waves,

Yet somehow, I missed her ways.

A fleeting bond, a transient thread,

Still, it ached when it was dead.

Caring is strange, uncertain, absurd,

Like a puzzle pieced by unspoken words.

Eventually, I changed my route. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to. The old one felt hollow now. Still, old habits die hard, and the empty roads felt incomplete without a bottle rolling at my feet. It had become part of me.

On my second day on this new path, a guy stopped me.

"Why do you always kick that bottle?" he asked.

I smiled at the irony of the moment and replied:

"It’s an art, you see, to keep it in stride,

To guide its path but never decide.

No strings, no chains, yet it follows along,

A dance of control between right and wrong."

"Ignore it once, and it wobbles away,

Life is no different—it never will stay."

I taught him how to kick the bottle. And as we spent the next two days together, we became friends in the same quiet way that I had with Samaira.

And that’s when I saw her again.

She was standing on the other side of the street. This time, she wasn’t kicking a bottle. She was flipping one.

I ran to her. "Where were you? And what’s with the flipping now?"

She smiled, "I met my friend again. And this is what they were doing. So, I started too. But now... they’re gone again."

I looked at her, the bottle flipping between her fingers, the echoes of our past still fresh.

"Don’t worry," I said. "I’ll be here."

Are Samaira and I truly friends? Does time measure the depth of a bond? If life is a walk and people are the ones who join in, are they free to come and go as they please? Should I treat every stranger like a potential friend, the way I did with the new guy? And if Samaira is back, does it mean I should let the new guy go?

Think hard, because the road isn’t just a road—it’s life. And the people we meet, they come and go, just like bottles rolling down an empty street.

But me?

I’m just a storyteller. My job is to tell stories, not to give answers.

-Dweep Goyal