Your Insistence Is Adorable.

Everything in the vastness of space is in a state of perpetual motion. Every tiny speck and every gigantic object that exists because several such tiny specks came together... everything, is moving. Shaking. Hovering. Vibrating. From the tiniest electron revolving around the nucleus of an atom to a huge star in a galaxy eons away. It is all moving, gently and crazily. Silently. And I am sitting here, still; suspended in all that motion. Waiting to be lifted. Waiting to be moved or removed by an unseen force. I am the glitch in the system, the nut that refuses to rotate while the rest spin in wild, silly circles. I am right in the center of a moving world, stationary. Useless.

I can see you, sense you, reading me, following me around. Trying hard to decipher me and my struggle. Putting such great effort in thinking about my past and my future. And I don’t even know about my present. I see you trying to visualize my story, trying to adapt it, picture yourself in it.

“What happens? What happened?” I hear you ask yourself, incredulously, as you turn another page to my story, as you see me running from the horrors of an unexplained monster. Running in vain. I see you crease your forehead, run your tongue over your dried lips, change your drooping posture, so that you won’t get tired. So that you’ll be able to read a little more without interruption. Your insistence is adorable.

You are tired. You didn't sleep all night, you were so engrossed in reading me, thinking about my story and tweaking your perspective as you moved further, word by word. I was there with you, without you realizing. I was watching you enthralled by a story that wasn't even your own. So I asked myself why you did that? Why did you hurt yourself over someone else’s tale? Cry over another’s pain, laugh at someone else’s joy? Why do you sit here, your eyes following me, your mind wrapped about me, when your own story remains abandoned, unwritten?

I've chosen to be the glitch. To stop, to drag on so that you’d become agitated. So that you’d put me you aside for a moment and look around and see what your own world has come to. The ignorance of your own reality so that you can indulge in mine is flattering. But I realize I've been doing the same. Trying to indulge in your story, figure you out while you try to decode mine. I've been trying to stop you from interpreting me, all the while looking forward to your reactions when you finally unveil my end. All the while we've been simultaneously reading one another, embracing tales not our own. We are linked this way, you see.

So, when I see you handling me with such care, adoring the curve of each word, cherishing the way every scene of my story falls into the other, melding beautifully and unlocking a mystery, I melt. I see your eyes shining at my happiness, you cheeks wet at my sorrow, I never realized I became so much to you. And I never grasped how focused a part you became of mine. After all, without you I am just a dying script, drying ink that will eventually fade to nothing. But you never let that happen. You've treasured me, spending so much time with me and thoughts about me when I wasn't even there with you. You became the lips that spoke my story, the syllables were written but you sought people and shared them. And I have come to realize now that I fell in love with you every time you opened my story, over and over again just to share my repetitive joys and tears one more time. And each time when you held me carefully before giving the story to a friend and whispering a loving, ‘Take care of it’.

And I have fallen for you each time I heard your sigh of relief when you once again held me in your hands.

-Momina.

*This piece has been written keeping this in mind: