I was touch-starved. I didn’t realise it until you touched me — a spark on my skin, a tremble in my bones. I’d lived a lifetime not knowing I was craving warmth.
What was I afraid of? The first kiss. The first love bite. The first wandering of hands. The first time I let someone see me undone.
I wanted to dissolve into you — breathe in your scent, blur the edges of who I was, and feel safe for once.
I’m an anxious person. Driven by anxiety and nightmares all my life. Never learnt to rationalize traumas like how they show on TV or post on social media. It never made sense to me. Why did it happen to me? I don’t know!
While growing up, being a school girl, I often questioned, “do people really love me or do they just pretend?” I knew my late parents loved me. But, what about other people? I wasn’t sure of that.
Then, I moved to a new city alone at the tender age of 19. I met new people here. Now I get what it is to be adored by your people. Someone covering for your attendance, someone bringing home made food for you, someone writing the assignment for you, someone letting you stay at their place, someone trying to woo you with their flirtatious tactics, someone holding you in their arms while you cry.
Thereon, I kept meeting such beautiful souls everywhere I chose to go. At work. Among mutuals. On trips. People who would go at any length to bring a smile on my face. People who would listen to talks for hours. People who would treat me with so much care and affection that it swells my heart with warmth. People who fixed something they never broke.
The feeling of being loved by the right people. People you chose to be with in your life. People who made you forget your past self filled with insecurity and scars. Oh, to love and be loved in return. Is there any greater feeling than this?
I have collected people in the form of love. The love I always wished for in my teenage years. The love I thought I never deserved. My people gave it to me like it meant nothing, as if it’s the way they were born. They taught me what love is. They showed me the real color of love.
My heart aches in excruciating pain of missing you with every beat it takes.
My breath hisses down my lungs in a remembrance of your name.
Every inch of my skin recalls the traces of your fingers along the goosebumps on my body.
I’ll wait for you. I want you. I love you.
Your words keep drumming inside my head and I’m going insane with the sound of it.
How to say those words back to you when I’m incapable of saying that to myself?
I’m afraid, one day you’ll find out that my personality is a delusion and I’m nothing like you imagined.
Being in love and not needing you; could it be the same? I must learn to love myself first.
Baby, one day I’ll shatter my walls for you. So, just hold onto me until then.
Your gentleness will keep me warm on cold nights.
We shall meet again under the same sunlight, lying on a wet grass after a rainy day.
The day we’ll be healed and happy.
As I sit down today to jot down the memories of the days spent with you. I feel nothing. As if all the words of this world in any language have stopped making sense to me.
You were too good to me. Similar to what a sunflower is to the honey bee. I had often wonder what makes you like me. I was nothing like the inspirations of this universe. I was just a flawed human with a scarred soul.
You were too kind to me. Similar to what a mother is to her child. I had often hurt you, but you always chose me at the end like no-one else exists in this galaxy.
The romantic. The artistic. The sublimist. I was neither. You were all & beyond. You were made of star dust. Shining brightly in an open sky. Poets & sculpturists would fight for your one look.
With a heart of a feather I go with you, wherever you take me. I was too fragile for you to handle. Your fingers traced the lines of my tears. My wounds cut deep down into the shaft of my bones.
You saw me gleaming light through me. Your warm embrace healed a part of me which was not for you to fix. Your delicate touches on my skin soothed the bruises on my mind.
Perhaps, I belonged with you & you with me.
Warm like a summer breeze on the balcony, his skin would feel on me. He was mesmerizing in all his glory and I was in awe of his charm. He was melancholically beautiful. Ironic, isn’t it? His love burned me as much as it soothed me.
Do you love me? – he’d ask curiously.
I had loved you even before I’d known you! – I’d say nonchalantly.
His smile would be so blinding at that one sentence. I was in love with his precious smile. If houses are built with bricks and cements, I’d say that homes are made of protective arms embracing you and a heart beating rhythmically against your ears drifting you off to sleep.
Why do you love me? – he’d ask innocently.
I wish I had an answer for that. All I know when he’s there I’m not afraid of anything. He lights up the darkest parts of my soul. He looks at me like I hung moon and stars in the sky. His touch grounds me. His voice is my favourite sound. He makes me fall in love with myself.
I don’t know, but I know that… In any universe. Anywhere you’d go. I’ll find you. I’ll choose you. I’ll keep loving you the thousand times over in every lifetime – that’s all I’d say burying my head against his neck with a hope that he’ll understand the depth of my love for his pure soul.
Nida Khan 