Where Love Learned to Wait
Where Love Learned To Wait
I was never taught the art of hiding.
Not love –
it flowed from me like oil from a lit lamp,
meant only to give light.
Not sorrow-
it settled in me like morning mist,
thin, patient, and faithful.
And never your name,
which rose within me
the way temple bells rise at dawn –
not to announce,
not to insist,
but to remind the sky
that someone was waiting in prayer.
I wear my heart the way backwaters wear the sky,
open as cupped palms,
holding blue, holding fire, holding storm.
Every passing cloud leaves its face on me,
every wind writes your name in ripples.
If you choose to wound me,
do it the way lightning loves the earth-
sudden, blinding, truthful.
Split me like a coconut tree
that has stood too long in the rain,
so the light shows where the sweetness lived,
and even the scar remembers
it was touched by something unforgettable.
If one day you walk away from me,
please do not turn your head to count my footsteps.
I will not follow.
I know some birds do not leave for lack of love,
but because the weather inside their wings has shifted,
because a different sky
has begun calling their blood by name.
But if one day you return,
your voice worn smooth like pebbles by years of water,
your eyes carrying the weight of old monsoons,
I will not ask where the road bent away from us.
I will only answer you
the way the sea answers a river at its mouth:
I did not chase you.
I did not harden.
I did not forget.
I remained –
where love knows how to wait without moving.
If someday we cross paths,
like strangers circling Thrissur Round at dusk,
your shoulder grazes mine
as lightly as a memory passing through the air,
your eyes moving past me
as if I were only another face the evening forgot,
I will stop.
I will stand there
while your absence stretches longer than your shadow,
lengthening across the road like sunset itself,
and I will whisper to my ribs –
this is the girl for whom my heart once learned
how to breathe without asking.
They say a lifetime can cradle many loves.
Perhaps.
But only one love tutors the body
in its private grammar –
teaches it how to ache
the way earth aches for rain,
how to smile without lips,
like light behind closed eyes,
how to cry without sound,
the way roots drink in silence.
Only one love slips into ordinary hours –
thinking of another soul
while tying shoelaces like small knots of promise,
while lighting a lamp as if blessing the day,
while stirring tea absent-mindedly,
watching your face rise in the steam
and fade, again and again.
I remember us –
resting on the laterite steps after rain,
the earth still breathing beneath our feet,
mud clinging to our ankles
as if it wanted to stay.
Your bangles held the rain,
each one a small moon trembling on your wrist,
and my fingers moved in slow circles there,
learning you the way water learns stone –
patient, devoted –
as if time itself had paused nearby,
leaning in quietly,
afraid to disturb
what love was teaching our hands.
I remember your laughter,
drifting into me like jasmine
loosened by evening wind –
weightless, unguarded,
yet powerful enough to undo me.
It entered quietly,
and stayed,
scenting everything that followed.
I remember how you slept,
one hand folded like an unanswered prayer,
your body still,
as if listening inward.
You lay there so gently
it seemed even dreams
had to ask softly
before touching you.
When kitchen smoke rises at noon,
curling like a slow prayer from the pots,
I wait for you by the doorway,
as houses do –
open, hopeful, remembering footsteps.
When evening lamps wake the house,
their small flames blinking like eyes of faith,
I wait for you beside the tulsi plant,
where the air smells of devotion
and patience learns to stand upright.
When jackfruit leaves darken with age,
heavy with the wisdom of seasons,
I wait beneath the old mango tree,
letting fallen time brush my shoulders
like passing years.
When the moon swells like a kept promise,
round and watchful in the sky,
I wait on the fifteenth night,
counting light
the way hearts count hope.
When monsoon rain needles the earth,
stitching sky and soil back together,
I wait beneath the umbrella we once shared,
listening for your breath
in the sound of water.
When canals grow quiet in winter,
their reflections holding their breath,
I wait on the stone steps –
still, worn, enduring – like love that has learned
how to remain.
If this body grows weary,
bones humming like tired temple bells,
I will wait where breath loosens its grip,
where ache is no longer
the language of being.
If time thins us into strangers,
wearing our faces smooth like river stones,
I will wait beyond clocks and calendars,
where moments do not erode
what the heart once knew.
If this life misplaces our names,
lets them slip like sandals
left at the riverbank,
I will wait in the next –
the way Kerala waits for rain:
with cracked earth lifted in trust,
with rivers rehearsing their return,
with patience older than drought,
knowing the sky never forgets
the ground it once touched deeply,
the place where it first
fell in love.