Confession

By Roshan Tara

I remember the first time I saw her

the world was loud around me,

but she stepped in

and silence bent

bent around her.

her eyes

a shade of light brown,

so rare it almost fooled me

into calling them golden.

our eyes met,

and somewhere inside me

something quietly shattered.

I thought it would pass

like all passing wonders do

but days folded into weeks,

and she lingered

in the spaces between my thoughts,

in the ache I tried to forget.

her hair caught the sun

like a crown she wore without knowing,

and her lips

pink, full

always a promise:

laughter, ruin, love.

and when she smiled,

I broke again, and again,

until breaking

became the only way I knew how

to live.

her voice

god, her voice

smoke that doesn’t choke,

but curls soft and low,

wrapping around me,

teaching me longing.

each word an arrow,

each wound worn like quiet pride.

even her scent betrays me

a trace of cologne in the air

I follow like a pilgrim,

believing salvation lies there.

I dream in that fragrance,

wake in it,

and drift through days

as though every breath

is borrowed from her.

I have tried to write her

trap her in ink

hold her in paper

but no verse is enough.

she is too vast, too infinite

and silence itself

bends its knees before her beauty.

there’s something wrong with me,

terribly wrong

when our eyes connect,

it’s like an exposed wire

pressed against my skin:

a shock, a fire, a fever

I cannot escape.

and still, I crave it

the trembling, the undoing,

the helpless surrender.

she’s rewritten me

the boy I was, gone

replaced by someone

who knows only her name, her face, her light.

I am no longer whole

she’s taken pieces of me

and I would gladly

let her take the rest.

if love is madness, then I am lost already.

if love is ruin, then let me burn in her flame.

what is sanity to a heart that has seen her?

what is safety when danger wears her smile?

I am hers—though she may never know it

every breath, every secret, every trembling part of my soul

bends toward her.

and I, a boy undone,

have no wish to be mended.

By Roshan Tara