She knew he was the one, when all he saw was her soul. The rest was just a distraction. He said to her, "I never chose you for any reason, I could've never chosen you for you've always been there, and so there was never an option of choosing you, only of accepting your arrival!"
She just listened to him, stared at him, smiled, and realised how he says the same things which she once threw away into the air, hoping that someday someone would hear her!
Now, she finds her own words being said back to her! Maybe those were always his words, which appeared from her pen and formed all these stories about him, which were once written in anticipation of his arrival and are now written as an act of acceptance that he's here! She says, "tell me what else can I do except just smiling under a million stars, where moon inundates me, and sings me a lullaby, where you appear in the spaces between every word?"
And that's what she feels when she thinks of him, when she speaks to him, when she hears him! She feels darkness being filled with this divine light that purifies everything it touches, and all the million bodies that create us then find themselves being aligned towards each other, where every step they take towards becoming a better human is nothing but a step taken towards each other, until they reach at each other and become this beautiful system where exists light, slowly piercing through darkness in their hearts!
And these beautiful smiles that appear these days, they are accompanied by the most honest of tears, and mixing them together they are now learning to exist with each other, where they flow just like love, overcoming every block, every pain, to build upon this journey, where she finds him sitting by the window, staring at the mountains outside while she looks at him!
For she has started seeing those mountains in him! She has started finding all her stars and that copper moon in him, like the ring he once put on her finger, before asking of her from every part of this universe! And then she just found him appearing in every moment!
For every moment is nothing else but him!
My thoughts don't lie when they tell me that I belong to happiness
He knew I'm a bit quirky and at times do things according to my wishes, while discarding someone else's will! And yet, he looked at me and said that he accepted me with all these flaws!
And then I stared at him under a soothing moonlight, and remembered that wish from my early twenties, where I wanted to be with someone who's crazy enough to hold my hand and drag me away from my irrational decisions and shows me the world that goes missing for me! Shows me his perspectives, pushes me into the previously unseen and helps me explore what went untouched earlier!
I looked at him with a smile on my face and held his hand, and dragged him away from where everyone was standing, he told me that we didn't have a torch light and the road was dark, but I didn't listen to him and kept walking! He told me that I was shivering in cold, and wanted to return to the home! I didn't stop! And kept walking while holding his hand, until we reached the edge of the lake! There, the water glowed under the moonlight, illuminating everything!
He said I was right; we didn't need any torches! And I was right in assuming that he had never seen that view before, even though it wasn't his first time there! Midst those greenery!
He silently stared ahead! I stared at him in between! The twinkle of the million stars waited for us! And that's all we stared at, as we slept under them, though I cheated in between and took my gaze off the stars, and turned myself towards him, slipping my arm around his waist only to watch him melt into a cuddl He was that old dream coming true! He was that crazy guy! Even if I was still that silly girl, who thought she had seen everything! No, I hadn't! Not until that night!
For that night I finally saw him! That crazy guy from my old dreams!
I finally saw my crazy guy!
He brought out the best of me, and took my soul wiped it clean.
He stood at North End's smoking zone, staring at the sky bathing in the golden light of a sunset, and slowly winding up to embrace another day's end! As I watched the passers by walking home, and few couples sitting down for a drink after a long day!
He stood there! Lost! Silent! Still! Untouched! Pure! Staring at the luminous sky! Oblivious of the world around him! As the people walked by, clouds moved in the sky, and the birds were flying back home! And there was I! With each of my steps leading me to him!
I stood beside him! Trying to stare at whatever he was staring! Trying to understand him! Open each of his knots! Decipher all his secrets! And yet I found a restlessness building inside me, while I kept staring at his view! Trying to find the key to the door in his wall! Until it hit me!
And there came a moment, when I turned to stare at him! And then it was all calm! Everything just dissolved into nothingness! And I could then see an opening right there, where there was no door or lock! Just the way those glowing stars were his truth in that moment! A glimpse of him was my truth! For he became my cherry blossom! My mountains!
My sunset! And my truth was all that was required! More than the need to understand or decipher him! For every second spent staring at him, was every second spent accepting him the way he was! It was in his eyes! The fire that never burned out! The spark that never died! I saw it whenever he spoke of something he loves, even though he always tried to be subtle about it! He never exaggerated! Never revealed how much small gestures, being listened to, or being seen for who he was meant to him! He never exactly voiced the emotions his eyes conveyed anyway!
And there it was! He was teaching me how to fall in love! He was teaching me how it was just so simple! You just have to listen to your heart, instead of trying hard!
Falling in love with him was just so simple! So pure, so much different from all our definitions! Like a beautiful surprise, that didn't make us weak in our knees, but subtly tiptoed into our lives!
Just so simple! Isn't it, love!
Life was always hard but with you, it seemed a little less hard! Smiling never really made sense, not until you came waltzing into my life and showed me colors existed instead of just blacks and whites! And when I held your hand in one of mine and put the other on your back and waltzed with you in my room with no rhythm at all while you laughed, oh that laugh, I knew in that moment, I would have you in my life no matter what it took! And never have I ever doubted or hesitated in that for even a second! Because no matter how bad life will ever get with you, I know one thing for sure! Life will always be worse off without you! And as I looked outside the train window, I imagined a life without you and I just wondered what a wholly useless life that would be! So I will whisper my vow of love to you over and over! And tell you that you are beautiful and even when the going gets tough and everybody believes that I have every single reason to leave, I will find every single reason to stay!
forever.
Every unfamiliar road I've ever walked has led me to you!
And every bleak mile I've walked was a triumph to me!
Because with every single step I drew closer to your arms!
To the one and only place that has ever felt like home to me!
And your kiss still tastes the same a year and some days later!
Your hands still run down my neck the way they did before!
And despite the distance,
your warmth is still persistent in cutting through my clouds!
Because everything has changed and yet our us is still the same,
like kids in love, with devoted eyes and honest lips!
And the world still slips away and melts around us,
Encasing us in the euphoria and beautiful everything that is love!
The writer is a poet, Fulbright Scholar and Head of English Department, Senior Section of Viqarunnisa Noon School & College
---Fatema Zohra Haque
Latest News