sehar

Shades of the Brave New Woman (revisited)

sit with me a while. Your handwriting looks familiar. Here is the first page of my story. why don't you write your name?

your touch raised a phoenix from smouldering ashes, your words nursed a butterfly garden under my ribs, your eyes read a novel my tears had concealed, and your love, your love wrote a saga unmatched.

this is the kind of bookstore where the book finds you first. Novels everywhere, spilling over bookshelves, stacked to horizons on oaken countertops, wherever your fingertips caress or your vision meets, far too many skeletons on this continent. Alas, finding the right one, yours, is a clandestine tryst with ardour and fortune. I recognise this feeling. Aeons of looking and failing, papercuts, tear-stained pages till my compass ever ventured in your direction.

running my fingers over gilded edges, frayed pages, velvet and leather. Some delicate, some fortresses. Some wear oversized burgundy coats, some lavender cardigans. embossed golden, familiar typefaces. Souls touching for a brief eternity.

crushed roses, ancient publications and crescendoes of longing. The fragrance of parchment, the sweetness of a scent that knows it belongs outside a glass valise. Do not forget me, it rustles, pervading everything, imprinting on every page my sonnets have ever uttered. smells like home. like you.

beneath this tattered canopy of jaded symphonies, huddled amidst racks of moonflowers and bouquets of sunflowers, there is silence. meet me here.

single lanes, a two-way street. nestled in between. Amidst the hustle of a thousand splendid stories, next to a train thundering past,  not unlike the way you became the protagonist of mine.