By Shizah Aziz Bolwar
It is the 12th of April in the year of the unspoken words.
I leech onto old conversations and bleeding wounds.
The taste of metal is quite dear to my tongue.
I hope you know I now carry the silent weight of you with me.
I hear jokes you would find funny and laugh on your behalf,
and hum the tune when I hear your favourite song—
only loud enough for me.
It is the time of watering clouds, and I think of how we've never experienced the rain together as one.
We've only squinted at the scorching sun and kissed under summer skies.
I think of how many things we'll never experience together.
It is the time of stone and hail, the smell of petrichor up in the air,
and I wish I knew how to shape mud, to sculpt you out of clay, only to hold your face again.
Love, this is not the first time I've drowned in your longing,
but it feels different from the time I swam in your loving.
My chest moves up and down, but I can't seem to learn to breathe underwater.
It is only a slow descent towards the bottom.
I think it is only a metre, only a mile deeper till you are forgotten.
But how foolish of me to expect mercy,
to think time would steal my memories of you—
when the scent of your skin is settled in the marrow of my bones,
when the breath that fills me is the air that has left the lungs of none but your own.
It is the 12th of April in the year of the unsent letters,
and in my dreams, we're in the rain, dancing together.
In my dreams, we're dancing even when time didn't let us.