By Mansi Joshi
I want the of-course-I-love-you kind of love,
You don’t look at how far the fall is,
You hope for the best and just jump.
At least I did,
I was a rule-follower since birth,
For once in your life a rule-breaker like you to safety and to a parachute you clung.
I had the tiniest details fleshed-out in my head,
Filled my hopes in the outlines and in the gaps,
Can art fix me is the question every time I have to beg.
You take my hand one evening,
Right in the middle of a perfect sentence,
“Oh, let me just type this out,”
But all thoughts leave me when I see the corners of crisp white edges in your fingers,
“No way,” I say a second before I slip into the trip-tomorrow jitters.
We don’t stay in luxury hotels,
A humble homestay with family abroad,
I watch your aunt recall memories on when you were a kid,
I never knew family like I know yours.
Were you a happy child?
I feel the frown creeping up on my lips,
You kiss it before it can set a lasting impression,
It goes away like it took the wrong route,
Like for the first time,
I was the one happiness could finally choose.
They kept saying my time would come,
That this heaviness would wear off,
That I would exist out of poems,
Out of the loving claws of ink and paper there was love.
A broken heart isn’t scared of a few more cracks,
It fears safety and peace like it was worse than death.
I was terrified when I took the leap,
A part of me knew your arms wouldn’t catch me,
The point of falling isn’t to know you were around people ready to save you,
It was to let wind scrape against your cheeks,
And to see how big the world really is.
By Mansi Joshi
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