Handle With Care.

By Neeharika

I think the reason why your heart is so radiant is because it’s made of glass and that’s also precisely why I can’t make it mine. I’m sorry, I’ve just never been good at the whole “handle with care” thing. I’ll make you trust me with your deepest secrets and darkest desires but don’t get me wrong, I’m not manipulating you. In return, I’m giving you my heart. I don’t know what love feels like but you’re the closest and best synonym for it that I’ve come across so far. You see, I only love to be held, to feel something other than numbness and I can be incredibly selfish but not when it comes to you. You tell me that you like coffee and I make it exactly how you like it. You share your favourite songs with me and I analyse each and every word to find pieces of you. You tell me that you’re intolerable and I get mad because how could you possibly think that? I listen to you go on about your so-called friends and how you feel like your presence doesn’t matter

to them. That one time, I almost screamed “It does to me,” but before I could, you told me that I’m the only person you open up to anyway. You said it’s only me whom you find comfort and solace in. And that shut me up for a minute but the very next, greedily I wondered, if that’s all I am to you. If you’re telling me about your dreams and the kind of people you’d like to meet and the things you wish to do with them but I’m not in any of those plans, then am I wasting my time here? Because you always speak about forever so casually but that’s something I cannot offer. It’s difficult for me to understand as well because the truth is, I want to do so much with you. I wanna do things that we already do, though with the type of certainty that only comes when both the people utter those 3 sacred words but I’m not sure if I could do that. Because I’m afraid, after a while, you’ll get tired of me (just like all the others). So if it’s not too much, could we just be? Can we never give up our false platonic pretence and continue calling our little moments mere acts of friendship? Can we keep looking into each other’s eyes with silent confessions burning on our tongues? Can we keep holding each other’s hands and carry each other’s unsaid and meant to be broken promises without making it too real? Because I don’t know how long this (whatever it is) is going to last but what I do know is that I won’t be able to deal with the hurt that’s bound to come as we approach our ending.

(tell me, why am I already thinking of how you’re gonna leave

when I’m the one who’s pointing to the door?)

• MJ.

By Neeharika