Athira Krishnakumar

i used to think flowers weren’t for me. i’ve loved before. loudly. endlessly. looked at petals with awe, memorised the shape of beauty but never held any that were given to me.

and now, there’s you. no occasion, no grand gesture, no apology behind it. just because. just because you saw them and thought of me. just because love, to you, looks like this.

and i think that’s what undoes me the most. that love doesn’t always have to arrive screaming or prove itself through ache. sometimes it just comes home with flowers and the world goes quiet in the softest way.

and for a while, that truth sat heavy in my chest.

not because i wanted him back

but because i had given so much of myself to something that was never really mine.

but here’s the thing i didn’t expect:

i’m okay now.

actually… i’m better.

i’m lighter. freer.

like i finally exhaled after holding my breath for too long.

there’s no anger left in me.

just this quiet kind of gratitude.

because him leaving?

was the beginning of me coming back to myself.

someone else loves me now.

fully. gently. without conditions.

and i never have to wonder if i’m too much or not enough.

i never have to explain why i need reassurance or apologize for feeling deeply.

it just feels easy.

safe.

like this is what love was always supposed to be.

and still, parts of him linger.

in the way i set the lighting in my room,

in the way my camera lens leans toward softness and shadows.

his aesthetic left a mark.

but it’s mine now.

i’ve made it mine.

we weren’t right for each other.

we weren’t meant to last.

but we were meant, maybe.

for a season. a lesson.

and that’s okay.

not every love has to end in forever to be real.

i don’t wish him harm.

i don’t wish he’d stayed.

i just hope he finds someone who sees him fully.

who loves him in the way he wants, the way he needs.

because closure doesn’t always come with a dramatic ending.

sometimes, it looks like peace.

like soft mornings and someone else’s hand in mine.

The memories are blurred but the feelings... they’ve stayed. They’ve taken root in me - tangled and restless, like vines climbing over walls I never meant to abandon. Sometimes it feels like my whole chest is just a room filled with loose threads, none of them tied, all of them pulling at me at once.

I am forgetting everything.

It started with small things - where I left my glasses, the name of that song you used to hum while cooking. I laughed it off at first. Everyone forgets. But then it grew. The forgetting became a fog, thick and slow, curling around the corners of my mind.

Yesterday, I found an old diary in the back of my closet. The leather was cracked, the pages yellowed. I didn’t remember writing in it, but the handwriting was mine - looped and uneven, the way it always was when I was excited or nervous.

I flipped through the pages until one stopped me cold.

“Tonight, I told you I loved you. You didn’t say it back right away. You just looked at me, like you were trying to memorize the moment. And then you smiled. That smile. You said, ‘I was waiting for you to say it first.’ I think I’ll remember this forever.”

I read it again. And again.

But it felt like I was reading about someone else’s life.

Someone braver. Someone who once knew how to love without fear.

I tried to picture your face in that moment.

I tried to hear your voice.

But all I could summon was a vague warmth, like sunlight through a closed window.

No details. No edges. Just the ghost of a feeling.

I sat there for a long time, holding the diary like it might anchor me to something real.

But the truth settled in quietly, like dust:

I am forgetting you.

Not just your face or your voice,

but the way it felt to be yours.

And the worst part?

I don’t know if I’m more afraid of forgetting everything,