You made me special

Dedicated to Imran Ali Gul, Fizza Zehra, Sumbul Mujeeb, Zubia Basharat, Omar Qureshi, Anees Ahmad, Sukaina Juma, Sana Ahmad, Sabba Khawaja

There was a time in my life when I felt my days slowly crawling by. Minutes seemed like hours and hours felt like endless days. I spent them isolated in my anger, in my frustration. My mind numbed from the pain. My heart emptied from the tears that had fallen. I walked on an unknown path leading myself astray every time.

I moved through crowds of nameless, faceless people. Strangers hurried past me, as my body was tossed back and froth between them, but they always moved on without a single glimpse. A mist of hopelessness crushed my spirit. It silenced my speech. I reached out to hold something but found nothing and I finally fell apart. I was alone. Slowly down the road, the mist began to clear and in life’s brief moment, I saw you standing, smiling at me. The light you emitted was radiant like a star. You were a beacon that guided me through my dark journey to a place I finally called home. That place was standing right next to you.

You were my angel of love, my pillar of strength and my ground of support. Every time, I stopped in my tracks, I looked up and found you. Still standing. Still smiling at me. You stood there in my darkest hours of despair, in my anguish, my confusion, my sorrow.

You saw through the ugly parts and helped me embrace all that I was. If it was not for you, I would have still been drifting in a sea of uncertainty. Flung from the shores into the sea, like a little pebble, lost in the depths of the ocean. Just wading, never hoping to be found. You gave me the greatest gift ever: you completed me by being who you were.

So this is dedicated to all the hands I still hold and to the hands that slipped behind. When I feel the world’s hues have turned to shades of grey, I remember the colours you painted my life in, just by loving and accepting me. The time you’ve taken out for me will always remind me of how beautiful everything is and that I’ve been blessed to have been part of your life and to have to you part of mine. And no matter where we go, your gift will remain somewhere in my heart. So thank you for walking this journey we call life with me.

The Final Letter - Goodbye

I wanted to write you something before my memory entirely fails me and you become a dream.

Even though my life without you had began long time back. I carry you secretly inside my heart. Hidden and protected from all, including myself, like a butterfly in a cocoon. Sadly, you’ll never come out to grow wings and take flight in my world. You are destined to die, as silently as you were conceived.

I do wish I could just take a peek in your life. Look at your smiling face and feel the radiance of your warmth seep through my skin. Look at you and know that you understand why suddenly I chose another road to walk on, away from you. Look at you and know that you have forgiven and see me the same. Just would look at you from some corner of your life, imagine holding you close to my heart and say goodbye, all over again.. live through the hurt of losing you again, just so I can relive that one precious moment of having you in my arms and smile, after you have gone from my sight, gone from my days, gone from my life, gone from my memory.

But I dare not step in the waters where you tread, fearing it would create a ripple in the calm then return once more to stillness. Fade back into nothing. Exactly, what will become of the time that is now. But somehow, since it is goodbye, it seems better this way, leaving everything unsaid and sealing our hearts for no one else to see what really existed.

Maybe words spoken, after years, would be powerful enough to draw up an illusion of what was left behind. Perhaps, never completely forgotten, lingering somewhere at the back of our heads, wondering, “What could have been?”, “How it should have been?”

Maybe, you still might have enough spark in your heart, not to have any regrets and smile at the thought of me with a sweetness in your mouth. Or possibly you might wake up one day and never have had felt my presence missing. Could you have already forgotten me?

Either way, what does it matter? I’ll never see you again. I’ll never hear your voice or your laughter. I’ll never even spring for my phone when it rings, quietly hoping its you. I know our lives have taken turns and can never go back. We craved out our paths, carefully, no matter how, unfortunately, it tore us apart. You were never mine to begin with.

Someone else will have the grace to look in your eyes. To touch your celestial skin. To feel your soul merge in theirs. To burn in the heat of your passion. To spend their days silently lying besides you; with you. I already retreated from the grounds where battles raged in the name of love and lust with you. There was no bugle sounded, when it all came to an end. No knights riding white horses came to save the day. Just the bitter reality that I lost you so suddenly, so quietly, so easily. I would have liked to have held on to you a little longer, a little tighter, when we waited for the bus, if I knew how short our time really was.

But alas, I have nothing left of you, except a few images of the person you embodied to be and the reminiscence of the days we wiled away in each other’s company. The places where you stepped, that once blared out your name, have hushed, as time created spaces between us. They no longer seek you, having turned themselves into a sanctuary for my solitude.

In my consciousness, my mind was intoxicated with guilt it drew from the bottled up emotions, you tried to hide inside. I felt like a stranger in a place I knew so well. And I couldn’t come in terms with it. A million questions raced through my head when I tried to reach out to you. I felt you turn away and did not want me to see you in your struggles. I could no longer hold on, so I let go. I picked up the integrity I had left and I moved on. Your happiness meant everything to me. And now, I refuse to look back because I’m scared to know how much I really loved you.

Needless to say, my pen moves at the thought of you when my defenses are down. When the world around me is in their peaceful slumber and I lay awake, thinking of you. The way you held my hand in yours. The way your face lighted up on seeing me. The way you looked in my eyes knowing it was wrong for us to be together.

Your love blew in my life like the spring breeze carrying the sweet fragrance of the blossoming flowers. And I felt you crawl under to the very essence of me. For awhile I squirmed at how you made me feel alive. Then I began to bask in the glory of having felt you. Till one day, you finally passed through me unto other lands where you really belonged. Your fragrance is still clinging stubbornly to me, slowly dissipating, until my body will engulf it whole and you will be lost.

This is how I choose to finally say farewell even though you are already gone.

Good morning, Sunshine!

So here I am again. Breaking promises to myself. I wasn’t suppose to be shedding tears but that place, where we made a thousand memories, missed your existence terribly and somehow along with those memories it witnessed the tears as they fell. Forgive me for my weakness, if that’s what you call it. There were too many emotions that were anew to me but, finally, I’m letting you go.

You were a hope for me. A constant reminder that I deserved so much better than what I had bargained for. You were that single burning flame in the darkness, my own love had drowned me in. Your laughter defied the sound of the sadness perpetuating inside me. You were the sunshine, greeting me, after the long silent night.

You gave this motionless body, a soul to feel life, touch it and feel divine; your divinity. The crystal clear glance that you laid upon me washed the sins from my scars to restore purity and innocence to this unholy flesh of mine.

And there you were, always silent, yet your voice echoed through every inch of me. And I heard you, I came, I stumbled, I fell hard, I loved and then I lost... only to be born again. So here I am again. Alive. With a heart filled with love and a face full of smiles, yet somewhere inside me, my wings are still broken and I’m learning to fly… but I’ve been changed by you.

Forget Me Not

Step inside my world, you’ll find pieces of me thrown across the floor, crushed under your weight. You come around here knocking, knowing how the door was torn down and how the path remained open for you to rob what you wanted. You took what you felt was rightfully yours and wasted it away, leaving me barren. How you chose to take the parts of me that made you feel beautiful. How conveniently you tossed aside what was broken and ugly residing inside. But don’t you forget that was even me.

Ode

Explain to me the difference between a delusion and reality. Explain to me, why I’m building up fantasies around you, when I know you’ll never be mine. Why does the sight of you make my body tingle with happiness? Why do I want to kiss your forehead and feel like a woman? Why do I find myself wanting to fall into pieces, just so you can put me back together? Do you know the way you break down my defenses without even trying? You leave me feeling stripped of my skin, looking at the core of me. The vulnerability you make me feel is frightening yet it arouses me. You evoke feelings in me which I thought I had lost and once wanted so much.

Why do I want to cover you in a wave of passion and just bind you in my world? Just hold you for a brief moment and pretend you’re mine forever.

I wanna keep watching how beautiful you look when the sunlight hits your brown eyes. See you laugh, even though its not with me, but see your precious lips curl up and kiss your dimples. I wanna walk with you in silence and listen to what you are saying to me. Are you saying something? But will you risk it all to stand at the edge of your world to accept what is really mine? Or will our lives collide and shatter into fragments which we won’t even recognize and forever live to regret…