Nostalgia is a dangerous poison, one that rips bandages off broken bones and scars off healing wounds. Memories have haunted my waking hours and nightmares like giant waves flood my sleeping minutes. Why didn’t I see that you had a third eye? Why didn’t I see that someday your tongue will crave and your heart yearn for more?  Thank you for making me know it the hard way before the easy one for today, I have learnt to be strong. I have had to fight a war with my conscience, to convince myself that you were never the one for me. I have had to convince my heart that it was playing to a foreign tune, not one intended for it. My feet have had to know that they were dancing to a ballad not meant for them, but it was a bit late, wasn’t it? I have touched your love once or twice, how sweet it can be when the sun is shining, how warm it can be when summer is in full swing, but wait until the season changes, it is the coldest of Ice in the winter, the toughest raindrop in a thunderstorm. It is the sad twanging of a tired guitarist, the last song of the sinking titanic. I so wish you had shown me reason enough and I would have taken off my gloves and fought for you. I wish you had shown me enough to make me believe and I would have taken a leap of faith, but where is the faith now?

I have been tempted, that I won’t lie, to turn my head and watch you walk away. I have been tempted to raise my voice above the rain and call you back. But then again, why should I look back at the port yet my boat has already drifted? Why should I walk back to where I left vomit and ingest it over again? Greed, I told her, makes us see the grass being greener on the other lawns, only to realize roses have big, beautiful petals from a distance but when you get closer you will see their thorns. I told her it would be too late to walk back and she swore she wouldn’t, she never did before. Well, she walked back, her face rugged and downcast but it was too late. She found out from those around the ocean, that the boat had just sailed. They told her, that the monsoons had carried the little dhow into the distance. They told her that had she stayed one more day, that had she waited just a bit longer, the sails would have unfurled with her inside. Her nightmares, they told her, would have all gone away when morning came. Too bad she didn’t wait, too bad she did not hold on. It was so unfortunate that she chose a bigger and more luxurious ship. She learnt too late, that every room was occupied when the captain with a sneer on his face called her out for being a stowaway. She now knows that sweet red wine can turn into bile in the mouth. She knows that a ball lying in the empty field can be a rolled up porcupine. A guest does not become the owner of the house simply because they found it empty. They have always told us, that he who loves a rose should love her thorns too, but what if the barbs are more prominent than the petals? Should I still hold on to the stalk making my hands bleed?