I listened to her heart beat against my ears, it was consistently thudding slowly. She had casually wrapped her right arm around me as we watched a movie and I slipped into her arms as though we have rehearsed this a thousand times in prior lifetimes.
In a few moments I would let my head rest on her lap. I did not know why then, but instinctively I took her hand and placed it on my heart. The simple significance of that moment was deceptive.
That moment would haunt me through the recesses of my memories.
The first time I had met her, I came away feeling an unfamiliar ball of confusion. I had felt a sense of loss when we walked to her doorstep, and I could not understand why. She was not one of those who would quicken my heart beat, she did not make me feel like time had stopped while I looked into her eyes, I did not feel the inexplicable urge to run away from her.
I keenly felt that sense of loss through all the temporary partings we would have.
I never had a chance to have her hand over my heart again. In the occurrence of that moment I would never have realized it would be the one and only time it would happen. It was so simple yet it exposed such vulnerability.
That vulnerability when you let someone know she is able to dictate the way your heart beats, and for the dictator it is equally vulnerable for her to know the terrifying power she welds over you.
In between the beginning and the end, there was a fragile existence of an Us. An Us that could only exist on the unspoken rule that we cannot be. That if we were not careful enough, if we walked too closely, if our hearts started to tune into the same rhythm, we would end up breaking each other.
For we understood each other across a thin telepathic thread, that we were both akin to a glass sculpture that was freshly mended after having broken into a million pieces – its hairline fissures are virtually invisible until you come really, really close to it.
The song of our heartbeats merging into the same rhythm was beckoning to me. I failed to erase how it felt like to have her hand over my heart. How could I?
For my entire life I floundered upon those who accelerated my heart beat and I almost dismissed her presence because she was the one who could slow it down. That among the chaos of my mind, she made me feel peace.
I wanted to write that song, to me it was like opening pandora’s box. The moment I try to write it, I knew the spell would be broken.
So here I write, these string of words put together for somebody. By publishing these words into existence, I am writing her into my history. I acknowledge the meaning, I try to translate the beauty with words and finally, when something is birthed into this world, it will no longer take up space in the writer’s subconscious.
It will no longer be a persistent siren, wanting to be written, to be brought to life. When you breathe life into a creation, you bestow death upon the thought.
Originally published on Medium.