Say, when you cross sixty, and I too am past fifty; will we still spend whole days laughing and playing, coffee cups in hand, together? Will our time come too...some day when we two sit and reminisce about these very moments?
So much has gathered to tell in all these years; will we too find the chance to dive into memories of friendship, just as others do? Will that time come again, when all I couldn't say today will finally be spoken, and I'll find relief?
Listen, when I speak of us, speak of us two, in this 'us' am I alone? Where is it written that only the married make couples? Only the married have the right to reminisce in old age—who said such things? This world has far too many rules about everything! Tell me, can't friendship have its own matrimony?
Listen, am I your friend? Or lover? Playmate? If not, then merely necessity? Or beloved? Or am I nothing to you at all? Am I the greatest lie in your life? What is our relationship, tell me? Is this even a relationship? Or merely moments? Nameless, destinationless moments? Or simply illusion, or habit?
I had said, across all my absences, only you exist. Does this absence have any boundary... the way sky spreads its body beyond the horizon?
When thoughts of you come, something happens to me I cannot name, words become so helpless, lying silent, just quiet...just quiet... then around me words float in the air... I never learned to catch them, only stayed quiet with deep interest, listening like an obedient child.
This silence will kill me, these unspoken words will burn me to ash! What does this emptiness want to say? What do they want from me? Language? Moments? Or simply ash?
Sometimes alone I take your hand and walk far away, then we have long conversations; those words need no reason, no destination; I am then in your presence, this is what matters most to me, in these moments I am never alone, these moments are my closest kin, for these very moments I live so happily!
Sometimes, even in the presence of someone longed for, one feels no such joy. If I truly had you, what more could I have gained? I do have you, yet why this emptiness in me?
মনকে ছুঁয়ে গেলো🥰