#fleeting

How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.

Every morning, our bodies kept time better than any alarm. Seven, eight o’clock, one of us would stir, press closer. Heat rising, hands fumbling, touch as a ritual. Not fevered, not exactly sacred either. Just ours.

After, we’d fold into each other until duty called. You left the room, the bed, the intimacy of it. I let myself sink back into sleep, drowsy with a comfort I didn’t know possible.

Later, you’d return as if the morning hadn’t already happened. Another round of softness, of skin. Then the debate: parathas or dosa. Then a smoke break in the balcony until the food arrived.

The bed became an archive: laughter, music, the clatter of spoons, your hands fixing, mine insisting.

One morning in bed returns to me: lights still off, our bodies still humming from play, my favourite Punjabi songs on. You didn’t understand a word, but you nodded along, patient, smiling, letting me translate love into a language you couldn’t speak.

And then the afternoon of ice cream. Four flavours, the bed crowded with colour. You tried to give me space when my phone rang, and I tugged your hand instead: stay. Your smile at that. Wasn’t it a moment you felt loved? The way you kept feeding me spoonfuls too big for my mouth, as if you wanted to leave no doubt that this was real.

It was never just about desire. It was the routine, the way our bodies rehearsed a future we didn’t know would collapse.

Who knew the clock would stop? Who knew there’d be no new entries?

It was fleeting. It is always fleeting.

I don’t know what to do with it now. To call it happiness leads to being greedy. To call it sadness feels like betrayal.