Forgetting Our Anniversary

I try to forget the date but I know you would remember that it had rained. The first rose I had ever purchased- the easiest ten-rupee investment of my life And how you looked at me with guilt and wicked amusement at making me squirm; I would not let you hold this rose, This rose was not yours just yet. I remember the kilometer we walked underneath your neighborhood trees and although we spoke of everything, our eyes were filled with confessions of love made the previous night. But our hands were not brave enough to find each other's fingers yet. I remember not wanting to look ahead But into your eyes, eyes full of secrets, of life and poetry and easy promises.

O! Those easy promises! But I held my neck stiff so you couldn't see My disbelief at calling you my own, So you couldn't find the unworthiness Hidden in my nervous smiles; I wanted to ask: "Are you sure about this?" "Will you teach me to love you so that I don't break you when I hold you too tight?" "Can I teach our children how to measure our planet with the shadow of a stick? To ask questions that have no answers?" But all I asked you that day was, "So, what do you want to do next?" And you found us the right kind of silence in a park we loved to loiter about and we spoke of everything and everything. But all I remember is how beautiful you looked when I forbade you to wear make-up, and how you complained with a pout that I was exaggerating your beauty, as if the mirror of my soul was too much.

The mirror of my soul is still too much for you, I know. I remember you predicting rain and how I half-worshiped you when the sky surrendered its water and forced us to run beneath the window-roof of the old building next to our favorite café, I remember broken stone against knuckles. My faded jeans staining with brown when I dropped on one knee and tried to ignore the lump in my throat as I asked you to be mine, formally, the way they do it in movies.

Your body looked so small, so precious, as you stood overwhelmed. Even though there was no surprise, both of us knew how the scene ended, and the rose was now yours, I was yours, And my fingers suddenly found courage to find the spaces between yours. I remember, I remember, I remember!