Hri's Reveries

Love is considerate. I set his message notifications to high priority on my phone and he texts me to ask if I want anything every time he goes to get himself food. I don’t write about him the way I have about past lovers— rash, unthinking, distorted. All the words I give him are gentle even on paper. I make them so, syllable by syllable. I lose myself in lectures, doodle in my notebook, and think back to biology classes in school. Mutualism is when two species interact and benefit. Two types. Obligate or facultative. The former cannot survive without the symbiosis, the latter can. I think about how a younger me would have dreamt of a lover who shares the same breath as her but now I think of the honeybee and its favourite flower as the ideal kind of love. Hydrogen is flammable and oxygen helps it catch fire and yet, the two can combine to form something incredibly stable and life-sustaining. Even in my boring science lessons, I tie my thoughts back to him. Love is considerate. (S...

Every now and then I dream of you.  Of quiet corridors in our busy high school / side eyes from our classmates / teachers’ knowing glances (even when they knew nothing) / you sitting a little too close to me / your best handwriting / your laughs being funnier that the joke / sharing secrets we never shared with anyone else / studying together in all those free periods / just talking when we had nothing to study / just sitting in silence when we had nothing to talk about / you telling me you loved my hair, my eyes, my laugh / secretly texting late into the night and feeling guilty / long phone calls / hushed whispers every now and then / ‘I love you’s that were sometimes returned, sometimes not (what if someone overhead?)  Every now and then I think of you.  Of broken promises / missed calls / unanswered texts / spiteful words (I know neither of us meant them but we said them still)  My dreams are longer than my thoughts but they are both equally destructive. And...