On Nights Like These

The steady pings of your messages broke the quietness of my room,

The stillness of my heart,

The kind of stillness that prevails over the sea after the storm has passed,

That descends upon the lips that whispered too many pleadings and prayers,

The curtain fluttered, letting me catch glimpses of the moon glowing with absolute vanity,

Amidst the dark, sad clouds that wouldn’t just weep yet,

Holding back rain, like we were holding back questions, confessions and promises.

How I wish the clouds could give away,

For on nights like these, when our bodies are still warm with lies that our phoney lovers have inked on our skins

The only things we have in common are rain, wet window sills and the memories only the petrichor revive.

We become teenagers all over again, blushing at our phone screens,

Experiencing goosebumps over every flirty text,

Caring too little about the hours passing by, Worrying too little about what tomorrow held for us,

The pings synched with our rapid heartbeats,

Our fingers raced over the keypads,

Our inhibitions and fears peeled away,

I smiled, laughed and cried.

I was falling for you, all over again,

I knew you were falling too.

How could the bridges that have been burnt reappear suddenly, like moon emerging from behind the clouds,

But maybe, just maybe the bridges were never burnt, they had always been there,

We had only tried to forget their existence and failed,

So that on nights like these, when we want nothing but the warmth of each other’s arms,

We could run across the bridge to rediscover love, to rediscover us.

I surprised myself by running towards you, then stopped abruptly,

Gasping for breath, I stared at you, and a miserable victim of failed love stared back at me,

I figured you wouldn’t even take a step forward, leave alone running,

For you feared that the old, damaged bridge would give away,

That we might fall hard, and hurt each other all over again,

That we would become mere lovers who lament the miseries of love in poems that don’t rhyme.

I felt tears of desperation sting my eyes

You would send all the texts except the ones I crave to read,

I kept my phone aside,

I was tired of being a lover who would never be loved back enough,

I was tired of believing and trying,

I was tired of staring at the empty space on my bed,

But, on nights like these when we realize we can’t stay apart, but neither can we stay together,

The only thing we have in common is empty space on our beds.

The notifications continued,

They broke the quietness of my room,

But not the stillness of my heart anymore,

I watched the curtain flutter, the moon was almost peering down at me,

As if on cue,I felt the first drops of rain against my cheek,

The clouds had given away finally,

But to my surprise, they wept tears of joy,

Like joy was the only thing they knew of,

When I moved closer to the window, I spotted you, leaning against your bike, your shirt already soaking wet,

You waved madly at me, when you saw me smile,

I tore my eyes away and grabbed my phone.

Empty spaces are no good, especially on nights like these, your message read.

I smiled, laughed and cried.

I was falling, you were falling too,

But this time, we weren’t afraid of hurting each other,

Hurt is evitable, so is love,

The kind of love that makes us want to lose almost anything for a mere moment of togetherness,

The kind of love that dies only to be reborn a hundred million times.