PERSECUTOR

It always has the manners of touch before it admits it is only nature.

The first drop on my skin does not feel like water.

It feels like permission I should not still be waiting for.

The second already knows my history.

And by the time it settles into my shirt, it is no longer rain at all

it is memory choosing temperature.

It touched me the way you once did, without warning, without asking.

One made the body wake up.

The other refused to leave it alone.

There are evenings when the rain is not above me.

It comes from within

from places I thought had already closed,

from wounds that learned how to imitate the sky.

It is strange, this equality of rain.

It falls on everyone the same way,

but it does not reach everyone the same place.

Some of us return home dry.

Some of us return carrying an absence soaked into the skin.

I stood in it because there was no other form of contact left

that did not require explanation

There are griefs that do not knock.

Mine learned the shape of weather.

It arrived again as rain,

umr bhar tameez se

jeeye jaate hain

bina shikwa

hips rise like a silent wave—

silk thighs slowly open wide

from nature or human hands—

A room like a sealed confession.

No alarms screaming yet. That comes later, when regret realizes it has been outpaced.

Two minds in the same corridor of intent:

One is still. Not calm—calculated stillness, the kind that makes noise feel clumsy.

The other is rhythm. Movement disguised as certainty. Every step already rehearsed in a future where failure is not permitted.

They don’t speak much. Talking is for people who are unsure where the exit is.

Instead—glances, timing, the small mathematics of trust that lasts only as long as the lock holds.

A camera turns away at the wrong second.

That is all it takes.

Not luck. Just alignment.

And then the work begins.

Not breaking. Not forcing.

Undoing.

Like someone persuading reality to forget its own rules.

⸻

Outside, the world continues its innocent argument about order.

Inside, order is being rewritten in silence.

And when it’s over, there is no celebration.

Only distance.

Because professionals don’t admire what they’ve done.

It arrives dressed as routine, but carries smaller truths beneath its coat things you only notice when you stop trying to control the weather inside your mind.

Move lightly through it.

Say less than you feel. Observe more than you react.

There is a quiet kind of strength in that restraint

like a locked door that doesn’t need to explain why it stays closed.

And if the world grows loud, remember this:

“कुछ बातें हवा में रह जाती हैं,

जिन्हें पकड़ने की ज़िद ही थकान बन जाती है।”

वो आधी ठंडी चाय

आज फिर मुझसे ज़्यादा जाग रही थी।

उसकी सतह पर जमी ख़ामोशी में

कुछ अधूरी बातें तैर रही थीं,

जैसे तुम अभी उठे हो

और लौटकर फिर बैठ जाओगे।

कमरे में कोई नहीं था,

फिर भी अजीब-सा लगता रहा

कि बातचीत अभी ख़त्म नहीं हुई।

कुछ लोग चले जाते हैं,

मगर उनकी आवाज़

चाय की आख़िरी भाप की तरह

किसी इबादत जैसा नहीं था,

वो उससे कहीं ज़्यादा ख़तरनाक था।

तू कुछ कहता भी नहीं था,

फिर भी तेरी ख़ामोशी

मेरी धड़कनों पर असर छोड़ जाती थी।

हम दोनों के बीच

बस थोड़ी-सी दूरी थी,

मगर वही दूरी

सबसे ज़्यादा जलाती थी।

तेरी आँखें—

जाने क्या पूछती रहती थीं मुझसे,

और मैं हर बार

नज़रें झुकाकर भी हार जाता था।

तेरी उँगलियाँ

जब भूल से भी छू जाती थीं मुझे,

दिन भर जिस्म नहीं,

रूह काँपती रहती थी।

अजीब था ये सब—

ना तूने इश्क़ कहा,

ना मैंने माना,

फिर भी हर साँस

तेरे नाम से भारी लगती थी।

कुछ रिश्ते

छू लेने से नहीं बनते,

कुछ लोग

सिर्फ़ पास बैठकर भी

इंसान को बिखेर देते हैं।

और तू…

She learns the shape of her own storms

and names them “manageable.”

Her mornings begin like duty,

not like choice—

hair tied back like a promise

she forgot she made to herself.

She knows how to arrive everywhere

before anyone notices she was tired.

And still—

there is a quiet place inside her

that never stopped waiting.

Not for rescue.

Not for miracles.

Just for a voice that says,

you don’t have to earn softness here.

She will not say she is breaking.

She will call it “a phase,”

“just busy,”

“nothing, I’m fine.”

Because fine is easier

than explaining the weight of being strong too long.

She has mastered absence in her own life

while showing up fully in everyone else’s.

And yet—

when the world goes silent at night,

she does not think of success.

She thinks of rest

like it is a language she once knew

but stopped speaking.

Somewhere inside her,

there is no anger.

Only a small, stubborn hope

that love might not ask her to perform.

That someone, someday,

will see the way she holds everything together

and not clap for it—

but take it gently from her hands

without making her ask twice.

She is not waiting to be saved.

She is waiting to be told,

in a way she can believe—

you can stop now. I’m here.

Not because you fell.