Love is not when you eat my leftovers or when you let me play my songs in your car, and not when you shape your day the way it suits me. Love is not when you calm me down when you see me grinding my teeth over that stupid friend of ours or when you tell me how people see me when I am unable to judge myself or when you motivate me to work on myself, sacrificing the time I took out for you. Love is not when you reach out for my hand every time I am sitting in that passenger seat or how you are always up on your feet helping me do things I can most certainly do myself or the way you are always there picking and dropping me, saving me a walk. Love is not how you laugh into my mouth when we are kissing in a funny way or when you miss classes for me or the way your eyes go teary when you see me in a long time even when it’s just 10 days. Love is how effortlessly you make all of that happen, how easily you let all of that slide and never ask credit for that. Love is how you are just happy to be there, near me, existing. Love is what you see me with and how your head unconsciously goes towards thoughts of me. Love is the way you greet me every morning with the same energy and smile like I am new and remade even though we fought recklessly the night before. Love is the way you try to understand me even when our thoughts don’t align and the way you are always up and forward to accept when you fuck things up. You redefine love altogether. You change its meaning. You’ve taught me that loving is letting go of all the things you can’t control. Love is you.
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This Love
One of these days will be the last time I’ll feel this love for you. This love that I have been carrying ever since the day we decided to separate. You know, I don’t think about this as often as I used to. Apparently, I might not have moved on but it is working. This distance, this silence. It is working and a part of that love, a large part, unfortunately, is gone. I think of it as kind of relieving but also upsetting. I never wanted this to go. The thought that this day is not so far makes me crumble. I might have promised you that it would never fade away, this love, but what matters more is that I promised myself. The day I confessed to you, I still remember, I was staring at the phone screen with my eyes wide open at 11:37 on a cold winter night. My heart was in my hand, no wait, in your hand actually, and I was praying to the lord that he would make you keep it. I had wanted you for so long and you were finally one word away from being mine. A yes. That was all that was between me and you. Not this world, not my past, not one thing. It wasn’t easy you know. As much as I was hoping you would say yes, I could not help but create a scenario where you would say no. A world where I would have confessed my love for you and you would have turned it down, and we would have been required to survive each other’s presence in person for 3 more months to follow before we could finally move ahead to college and get rid of that bond. Thank God you said yes. Love is a complicated feeling. We see them displaying it, talking about it, writing about it, and fighting for it, and yet about 99% of the times we fail to understand what it is. I think, love is giving yourself to someone in such a senseless manner that includes you giving away your greatest treasure as a human, your emotions, for someone else to look after. And however scary that may sound, it’s one of the best feelings in the world. It’s breathtakingly soulful to see someone want you. And it’s equally soul-crushing to see them take all that love back. I remember you once told me that sometimes you would stand against the wall with your forehead touching it, imagining that it was me. I still believe it to be one of the most loving things ever said to me. But back to the point. This fading love. One of these days I was reading all the paragraphs you used to write me back then. I would read them and question myself the same thing over and over again, how can something THIS amazing, die? I am and will forever be unable to answer this question. But just because you don’t have an answer to something does not make it untrue. Like this situation, our situation. I asked the lord for you and he gave that to me and took it back. I mean, I didn’t know it worked like that up there. There were instances when you would sit across me, eating or talking or doing anything and I would just watch you and think to myself that how, how can someone be like this? You shone so brightly it hurt my eyes. I used to get intimidated by your smile thinking that it would make people want to steal you from me. I can’t say I was wrong because look at us now. I don’t know if it was the people but it was something. Something I will never understand but will have to because maybe it makes sense to you. Meanwhile, I’ll sit here and watch this love fade away, this love that took years to form and years to come to shape. This love that speaks volumes because I can bet they talk about us every time we are not at the table. This love that makes it so hard for us to tell each other that we miss each other because we are worried to mess with our heads. What great love must that be right? I wish I could carve it out of my heart and keep it in a glass bottle by my table, looking at it every morning and thinking to myself that the best days of my life are behind me but not being upset about it. Incredible love. We go together. We used to go together.
Rain (Part 3)
He says nothing. Like the last time, I cried my eyes dry. He sits there silently letting me rant, letting me go on because he has nothing to say or because he doesn’t want to. And it breaks me yet further that he does not even care enough to give me an explanation. I feel like a broken vase that has been put together with adhesive only strong enough so far. I feel frozen and numb and a million different things but he sits there with no emotion on his face. I shed teardrops bigger than the hope I carried in myself. I curl up like the earthworm from the rain in the bush nearby. I know I should stop but I don’t know how to. I never knew how to.
“I’m tired, Ty. I’m tired of pretending that I am done with it, done with you. I’m tired of wanting to text you and asking my friends if I should when I know I will be getting the same answer every time. I don’t fucking understand how can I still dream of someone I left behind every other day. Every day I dream of you as if nothing happened or if it did it still worked out or even if it didn’t that I am trying. I am sick of these random breakdowns and unasked-for tears. I loathe that every night my mind subconsciously injects memories into my head, memories that I do not wish to see. Memories that were never made and I wanted to make someday but not anymore. I hate that after everything that went wrong, I am willing to forgive you. I hate that you are going on with life as normally as one could and here I am still left with these leftover crooked feelings, damp and stinking, rotting into nothingness. You used to say leaving was never an option Ty, and look at me now spending my nights alone staring at ceilings as if they would somehow liven up and tell me what to do and how to do. How to get over this hurt, ahead of this hurt.” I’m breathless as I am practically screaming by now. I collect my breath trying to calm myself down, getting flashbacks of a convo we had some time back. I realize I’ve said too much when I notice a tear on your cheek. I crumble.
“I’m sorry Ty. I didn’t mean to. It’s just that I never really thought of a life after you, I mean, sure we talked about it but I never thought it would turn real someday. And now it’s real and I am alive and breathing in this world without you by my side. I thought, I really thought we’d make it. I’ll shut up now.”
I say as I get a few handwritten letters out of my bag, letters I wrote but never had the chance to give. I hand them to him and he takes them and looks at me to tell him what they are.
“I knew you’d be coming. I had a feeling. One of these, I wrote a few days ago when I decided to visit. I think I should leave now. I… I’m sorry Ty.”
“I think it has stopped raining…” he says looking up at the sky.
“Of course it has, we aren’t dancing in it.” I say as I sprint out of that place, the place I used to look forward to for ten years of my life. The place I knew to be the only home besides my real one. I leave with no intention of ever coming back not that I will ever be able to. It has stopped raining.
Rain (Part 2)
You greet me with a rather glittering smile, and I return it as you ask if you can sit adjacent to me. “Of course,” I say, as I still cannot get ahold of my heart throbbing at the speed of a bullet train by now. “Watching the rain fall?” you try to make conversation. “I am, yes. I was missing this place, so I decided to visit. What brings you here?”, I reply. “Me too actually, weird coincidence.”
We sit there for a few fleeting moments, in utter silence. I rely on you to continue further with the conversation because I seem to have finished my word limit in my thoughts today.
“You miss this?”, you say motioning your finger towards the ground, the rain, and the ambiance around us and without a breath, I say “dearly”.
“It’s really been long, hasn’t it? I think over seven months?”
“I believe so.”
“You really can stop with those one-word answers you know. I promise I won’t mind.”
I look at you with pain in my eyes. My pain mostly converts to anger soon after but today I don’t seem to have that energy. “Hmm. Yeah, sorry my bad, I’m just a little overwhelmed.”
“I know. Okay I have a confession to make, I knew you were coming so this could be more than a coincidence…” he says.
“Do you remember how we got close? That one time back in 10th grade when I mistakenly hurt you and we had that dreadful walk to the water cooler? I remember seeing your eyes full till the brim and my body losing its strength. I remember the next period was sports and I was sprinting here, right at this place, drowning in shame for making you feel that way. That was the day I realized there was more than friendship between us, at least for me.”
“Yeah. I didn’t cry though.” He laughed. Not a hearty laugh though. A ‘I really don’t know what else to do laugh’. Things like these snap me. When someone tries to hide their emotions when they obviously need to let them out takes a toll on me and yes this reaction did. Now I know I would be saying things I should not. But it’s too late.
“You know, I never thought there would be a day you won’t be mine to touch. It’s saddening. You’re not mine to crave anymore, not mine to dream of. And yet I dream of you every day. Every night. Every night I have you in my dreams, trying to get close, trying to get near. How did we reach here when we promised each other we won’t? When we made a pact we won’t. How did we reach here?”
“I don’t know what to…” he tries to say when I cut him mid-sentence.
“You used to be my Cornelia Street, my Say You Won’t Let Go, my Bonfire Heart, and my Paradise. Now, look at you being my Empty Space, my So Good, my Glimpse of Us, and my Wrecked. All of this when you simply could have stayed. I would have started riots for you, Ty, I would have elevated to the sky and burned like a star for a million years if you wanted me to. And for some sick hopeless reason, I believe you would have done that too. How do you not remember all those future letters we used to write to each other? What about the future at all? Look at us now. On the ground dark and grey like ashes of all the words, we used to say as if they ever meant anything. Did they Ty? Did they mean anything to you? Then how could you let me go Tyler?”
Rain (Part 1)
I step in and it feels like a different world. A world I have known forever maybe even in my past lives. It feels like a million years since I last came here but also like yesterday. I remember my plan. I’ll go on a day it is assumed to be raining, sit on the bench near the book shop, facing the ground in the U-shape building. I would sit there until it starts to rain and I would watch the rain like we did when we used to be a part of this place, when we made this place from our existence. When this place was mine, ours. I cross the book shop and sit exactly where I was supposed to. I can see some young kids playing volleyball in there and shouting at the top of their lungs. I can see the usual buzz of the place and the air that is filled with moments that are becoming memories with every passing second. The memories these kids will reminisce if only they could remember them. I am overwhelmed. I continue to breathe in my thoughts as I see a guard walking towards me asking me who I am and what am I doing there sitting. I tell myself to be a pass-out student waiting for the period to get over so that I could meet a particular teacher. I lied, of course, I was there entirely because I missed that place. I was just writing in my notes when the first drops of rain touch the ground and the students run around finding shelter to save themselves from getting drenched. It’s funny watching them trying to avoid the rain as it was the only thing I lived for in these months. Getting drenched tip to toe, watching you do the same. I can literally cry my eyes out to this bare memory if I try to but I will save them for later. I heard a guy, seemingly an 11th grader, talking trash about the school, my school, our school, and I could not help but get offended. And don’t get me wrong I remember doing this myself as well but somehow now that I’m not a part of this world anymore it means the world to me. I know it sounds hypocritical but be it. As I watch my surroundings, I see that one girl not hiding away from the rain, letting it soak through her clothes, her body. Now, I might just start crying. As I continue watching her I see a guy walk right behind her and let himself get soaked too. Oh, to be that girl. Wait, I have been that girl, haven’t I? The two seemed to be in love, more like the last few days of friendship right before they fall in love. Deep, kind, breathtaking love, funny, exciting, exhilarating love. The kind of love that lifts you from the ground before it turns into convicting, soul-crushing love, bloodsucking, suicidal love. I had it once, I still do I guess. The bell rang and the clatter around starts to go back to their classes as their period seems to be over. They dread to go back to their classes, not knowing how dearly they would miss even the tiniest bit of it once they leave this place behind. There aren’t many people around anymore and luckily the guard is not in sight anymore, giving me enough time to be sad in peace. I am in a weird place honestly. I have always believed myself to be the type to always have her next move planned out, to know how the day is to go, to have it all planned out. But somehow, for the first time in my life, I don’t know where I’m going, what I want. For the first time in my life, I seem to have lost purpose, direction, and motivation all at once. And I believe you are a big reason for me feeling this way. It always baffles me how one person by your side can make you go through the darkest days by keeping you safe in their arms and how the same person can take that comfort away within a fraction of a second and leave you on the brink of existence. I miss, in bold capital letters, being yours. I am certainly crying by now, I think as I touch my face and yes, I was. If, only if there was a way to turn back time. I would give all my tomorrows for that one yesterday. I would sell my soul to be able to live those few days again even if I know that every time I would end up the same way, crying, brokenhearted, unwanted. I would not think twice. I dreamt of a life with you and that life was taken away from me ruthlessly a few months back. I fought but I lost. I sometimes stop and wonder if you think all of this too, if you feel this way too. Or are you free from these suffocating thoughts and leading your life without me, like it used to be before you ever met me. I remember one of the last things you told me was that you watch the moon when you’re lonely. Now I watch the moon hoping that maybe someday, we both would be watching the moon at the same time, at the exact same moment, with the same thought in our heads and the moon would look at the two of us, disheartened, thinking how good we could have been. I am crying my eyes out and probably making sobbing noises too.
I hear the guard from a distance and almost prepare myself to be thrown out of this place like we were once before because it does not belong to us anymore when I see something too extraordinary to believe. No way, there is no way on earth. I am sitting but my legs are trembling from the sight in front of me, the sight of you. I wipe off my tears in haste as I see you walk towards me, flesh and blood, like I remember.
Poetry In My Veins 