Mine has always been red. It represents so many emotions and spectrums, and—not to mention—is one of our primary colours.
It is angry and hateful, but it is the colour of love. It is the blood of war and the blood of life. It is the red of passion and pleasure, but it is the red of the devil and his sins. It is fortune and revolution, and it is danger and desire.
Red was my shy smile and my flushed cheeks; it was the warmth of being tucked under his arms and the cold of weeping into my pillow, longing for those arms to steady me.
Red was the shade of my lips the day we first met, and it was the same shade the day they first brushed against his. It was the lipstick I sampled on his hand and smudged on his jacket–the one he never took to the dry cleaner's because it carried a mark of me.
Red was the rose in my Waris Shah book, and it was his abhorrence surfacing when my flaws did.
Red is the animosity that now resides in a house we never got to build.
Red was the colour of his heart beating against mine—content, rhythmic, and in sync.
And it was the colour of the toxicity steadily seeping into these hearts—destructive, contemptuous, and resentful.
Maybe we were this way because we had too much passion to control? Maybe it was frustration from long days and difficult people? Or perhaps the thousands of miles that stood between us—each one like a brick in a wall?
We thought it couldn't be the kind of toxic that rots a person from within. Our love was too great for us to do that to each other, right? Our commitment was too resilient to be undone by such "phases", right?
We denied it until we stood in front of each other, nothing but flesh and bone, acid melting off our skin. Exposed and stripped of our masks and excuses, forced to face the truth.
God's gifts are abundant, until we take them for granted.
We were stuck between agony and bliss, between the pillow talks and the screams on calls, between the sweet nothings and the bitter profanities.
But the smallest of the good was greater than the worst of the bad.
His hand in my hair, my hand on his chest. Free and full of life, but entangled and chained to each other by hope, declarations, and a delightful, unfamiliar feeling.
His bright, jubilant eyes and strong yet gentle embrace gave me everything I thought was impossible to attain.
However, as a shadow remains a permanent companion, my hands—that strangle every joy I fall into—are mine.
God's mercy is boundless, yet I seem to find myself standing at the edge of it.
I wonder where those people who create a sanctuary from the vastness of their emotions live.
I wonder whether anyone else could love you the way I did.
I wonder whether I could love anyone else at all.
I wonder whether I can rest my head on your shoulder again, taking in the citrus of your heady cologne.
I wonder where the fireplace, bougainvilleas, and gleeful chatter of children in my dreams have gone.
You took them with you.
The doors of light are shut on me, and the walls are closing in.
Within this room, my nights are painful and suffocating, like a heavy, jagged boulder on my chest; anxious, like death is on its way; and hot, like only God's will and a silent prayer stop hellfire from consuming me.
He told me his favourite was a shade of red too.
His favourite was burgundy, and I was the maroon that didn't match.
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The rawness of this is beautiful 🤍
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