The Difference

By Tridip Borah

Some people ask as if cupping water

careful not to spill the truth before it’s ready.

Their questions linger like hands at the edge of a flame,

warm, but never burning.

Others come with fists closed around the answer

they’ve already decided is yours.

They demand a confession, not a story.

Your pauses become evidence.

Your silences, crimes.

Curiosity leaves a chair pulled out,

a light on in the next room.

It says, Tell me when you’re ready.

Interrogation bolts the door,

slaps a clock on the table,

and insists you speak before the minute hand moves.

We pretend the two are the same

that both are “just questions.”

But one is a bridge, the other a noose.

In love, in friendship, in passing trains,

the difference is not small.

It is the difference between being

a guest in someone’s home

and breaking in through their window.

Some of us learned to listen

the way we learned to breathe

without thinking, without hurry.

Others were taught to dig

until the earth gave up its last secret.

I have been both:

the gentle host

and the uninvited hand at the latch.

Now, I know the weight of each

how one builds a room with no corners,

and the other leaves you standing alone,

searching for a way out.

Curiosity says, stay as long as you like.

Interrogation says, you may leave

once you have told me everything.

I choose the first,

because love is not an extraction,

and intimacy is not a wound.

By Tridip Borah