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In my father's memories, when he narrates the story of how he met my mother, with every specific detail just like if it was yesterday. In those memories I saw Love bursting through the other door, with a dramatic entrance and swelling in my father's heart./ The way my Grandfather talks about his wife. And how he says: marriages arranged can be filled with love too, if one decides to be patient and rightful towards their partner. I saw Love slowly coming there with baby steps and staying. Staying long after her time in this claustrophobic world came to an end. I saw Love staying there in the form of hope, hope that they'll be reunited in paradise. In the form of prayers, prayers like “O, Allāh illuminate her grave with noor. The same way she illuminated my life when you sent her to mine.”/ And his theory proved to be true, when I grew up watching my father's brother and his wife fall in love in the same way they did, slowly but truly. And then I looked at my grandfather, probably with the sparkly eyes, just like the kid who first discovered the joy of receiving chocolates. And Love was there standing beside him, both of them with their arms crossed and wearing the same smug expression of ‘I told you so.’/ When my first friend on the internet was asked how she met the love of her life, she said: one day she just walked in the class and coincidently the only seat which was vacant was next to her future husband, and when I was teleported there while reading her answer I saw Love there smiling at the sight of them together, and upon noticing my presence just winking at me and holding a finger to it's lips, as if to say I gave up my seat for the sake of this young love to bloom, they don't know it yet. But time will tell them soon. And It did. Time surely did in the most beautiful way./ When I'm reading my books in between classes and my head suddenly jerks up, after hearing the sound of my friend calling my name, I see Love jumping out from the book, saluting me with 2 fingers while walking away, and I smile and do the same, knowing that Love is probably just going for a walk and it will be there waiting for me within the pages, along with the characters when I'll re-open my book again. And turn to the said friend./ When I was cleaning the old bookshelves in my house and found an Urdu poetry journal with yellowed pages falling out, the binding barely holding the pages together and when I asked my mother the story about it. She just looked at it, a wave of nostalgia visible in her eyes and said “It was the notebook your father and I used to exchange in the early days.” “Really?” I breathed in excitement. “Yes, now put it away.” But I didn't. How could I? It was too lovely to put away. And as I was turning the fragile pages with delicacy, in my mind the wheels of time turned back a little and I saw Love going back and forth every end of the week, carrying the notebook filled with poetries and love and sometimes roses too, gently pressed between the pages, knocking at my mother's dorm and other times at my father's house. Then I saw Love turn to me and say “Time pases but I stay, sometimes in the form of prayers and sometimes in the form of poetries. I always stay.” and then slowly vanish away./ And now that notebook resides at the uppermost shelf of my bookshelf, and I wonder if someday Love might magically appear in front of my eyes and sneak around my room and take that notebook away from here, to deliver it on someone else's door.

The earth does not deny the moisture, soaking up the rain in the dirt.

By morning there are leftovers from the storm-

downed branches, wet pavement, moistened dirt.

Evidence only; the storm itself long gone.

The morning glories bloom; the sunflowers perk up;

the chickens awaken; the dawn chorus begins.

The wet air smells so sweet and the sun begins to shine in earnest.

Fudge Style Cookies (V)