The night I first met her
She sat by the window
Hugging her legs close
Chin tucked between her knees
Humming a certain melody
The same one that played on the stereo
The one that I was accustomed to
Just like I was to him, of my past
On me I’d let them both grow
The boy and the melody
Like on walls grew fancy ivy.
This Girl I met
She sat there
Oblivious and serene
Unflickering and graceful
Just humming a melody
As I listened close
with my wrecked heart
And my conflicting brain
Both powerlessly dragged back to a memory
Of us, him and I,
Our laughter in the air intertwined
Eyes crinkled, Cheeks dimpled
Before suddenly
It’s all distorted by reality.
So I couldn’t sleep, just couldn’t
That was the first night I met her
At an odd hour,
Listened for a soul-soothing calling
Sitting by the window
Humming just for her
There was a sense of
familiarity about her
Like she’d always been
Right here
In a glass sheet separated universe
Like she lived in a parallel reality
As a better version of me
And she didn’t talk too much
Or at all,
But she said a lot more
Than I’d consciously ever expressed
And yet she had these guarded layers
That she’d never let you peel off
At least not as easily as I would
She was stronger like that
And less easily deceived
You see, her layers grew over
Miles of experiences
And ages of time
To shelter her from the crookedness of Love
and it’s painfully disgusting acquaintance- Doubt
Yet like me,
She reeked of wanting to be experienced
Her creases and curves to be remembered
Before she was wholly consumed
This girl I met,
I met her every night after
So I could heal
And maybe someday again
experience laughter
Because she knew it all
And was at peace
She was the fine line between
A loud hooting night owl
An ambitious soaring morning eagles
She was at peace
The kind that our world would
struggle to even comprehend
This girl I know from so recently
She reached out to help me
At a desperate time of need
But know this
She’s always lived in me
You’ve probably spoken to her
If you’ve had a conversation with an intoxicated me
Or post 1am when most others are asleep
I wake up and regret it all
Apologise and walk around not standing too tall
Only because the tinge of golden
Of broad daylight
Did me more wrong and
Made me more hopeless
But this girl I met every night
At her yellow window of a quieter time
She looked into my eyes and found poetry
She loves me
And that’s how she was all I had
My faith in human form
This why I stay awake all night
For the reassurance that she lives
My faith in me
And if I didn’t
I fear all else would hang on a string.
-Written by Tanushree Shivaram.