asha, do you hear me?

I am a pretty little liar covered up with the façade of bewitching mendacity dipped in succulent nectar. Perhaps, broken teenagers, dream, and talk to shadows forgetting that (un)loving someone I once loved with all of myself is also an art not many can master.

I am holding onto closed doors; for you see time and again I have fallen in love, dreaming about a fictional paradise just as fast as autumnal kisses of the maple leaves and harvesting memories in the vast fields covered with my grief, only to realize that it’s already winter; it’s also too late.

Continuing to breathe until it stops hurting, I write poetry in the hope of forgetting your scintillating touch, the shiver in my spine, delicate hope only sails parallel to porous paper boats, more often than not it only reminds me of the nights we laid under the cloudless sky basking in the glory of the midnight sun, our hands entangled, forgetting our story was not the kind that you wrote down in history books but like those that were discussed behind closed doors. The moon is a woman and the sun is a man but they can’t unite.

/shayad mai hi nasamjh thi,
tumhare andaar
khud ko dhoond ne nikli thi./

(Frost bite aches and desperate dreams), my body is the living remembrance of your hands delicately untying each lace of the corset and stroking my curves as if it were Persephone’s canvas that you were attempting to color with hades’ brushes.

/dil haskar mujhse poochta hai,
kya tum kabhi mere the?/

I have commemorated my heart with the polaroid of your memories; the fire in the living room is burning with the hope of igniting something in the dusty fireplace of your heart (a sanctuary for sinners); it is as much of a fool as I am.

/mohabbat karna agar itna hi asaan hota, phir yeh dil toot ta kyu hai?/

Your kisses tasted of sorrow more than love, and my tears are now filled with anguish rather than anger; why is it not just as easy to heal a broken heart, just as easy as it is to break it?